Plan Text

Text: The United States federal government through the executive branch should remove barriers to trade with Cuba.

China SOI

China 1AC
China is spreading influence in Latin AmericaUS reengagement key to combat it
Dowd 12 Senior Fellow with the American Security Council Foundation (Alan, Crisis in the America's, American Security Council,
http://www.ascfusa.org/content_pages/view/crisisinamericas)//Bwang Focused on military operations in the Middle East, nuclear threats in Iran and North Korea, and the global threat of terrorism, U.S.

policymakers have neglected a growing challenge right here in the Western Hemisphere: the expanding influence and reach of China. Eyeing energy resources to keep its economy humming, China is engaged in a flurry of investing and spending in Latin America. In Costa Rica, China is funding a $1.24-billion upgrade of the countrys oil refinery;
bankrolling an $83-million soccer stadium; backing infrastructure and telecommunications improvements; and pouring millions into a new police academy. In Colombia, China is planning a massive dry canal to link the countrys Pacific and Atlantic coasts by rail. At either terminus, there will be Chinese ports; in between, there will be Chinese assembly facilities, logistics operations and distribution plants; and on the Pacific side, there will be dedicated berths to ship Colombian coal outbound to China. In mid-January, a Chinese-built oil rig arrived in Cuba to begin drilling in Cubas swath of the Gulf of Mexico. Reuters reports that Spanish, Russian, Malaysian and Norwegian firms will use the rig to extract Cuban oil. For now, China is focusing on onshore oil extraction in Cuba. New offshore discoveries will soon catapult Brazil into a top-five global oil producer. With some 38 billion barrels of recoverable oil off its coast, Brazil expects to pump 4.9 million barrels per day by 2020, as the Washington Times reports, and China has used generous loans to position itself as the prime beneficiary of Brazilian oil. Chinas state-run oil and banking giants have inked technology-transfer, chemical, energy and real-estate deals with Brazil. Plus, as the Times details, China came to the rescue of Brazils main oil company when it sought financing for its massive drilling plans, pouring $10 billion into the project. A study in Joint Force Quarterly (JFQ) adds that Beijing plunked down $3.1 billion for a slice of Brazils vast offshore oil fields. The JFQ study reveals just how deep and wide Beijing is spreading its financial influence in Latin America: $28 billion in loans to Venezuela; a $16.3-billion commitment to develop Venezuelan oil reserves; $1 billion for Ecuadoran oil; $4.4 billion to develop Peruvian mines; $10 billion to help Argentina modernize its rail system; $3.1 billion to purchase Argentinas petroleum company outright. The New York Times adds that Beijing has lent Ecuador $1 billion to build a hydroelectric plant. There is good and bad to Beijings increased interest and investment in the Western Hemisphere. Investment fuels development, and much of Latin America is happily accelerating development in the economic, trade, technology and infrastructure spheres. But Chinas riches come with strings. For instance, in exchange for Chinese development funds and loans, Venezuela agreed to increase oil shipments to China from 380,000 barrels per day to one million barrels per day. Its worth noting that the Congressional Research Service has reported concerns in Washington that Hugo Chavez might try to supplant his U.S. market with China. Given that Venezuela pumps an average of 1.5 million barrels of oil per day for the U.S.or about 11 percent of net oil importsthe results would be devastating for the U.S. That brings us to the security dimension of Chinas checkbook diplomacy in the Western Hemisphere. Officials with the U.S. Southern Command conceded as early as 2006 that Beijing

had approached every country in our area of responsibility and provided military exchanges, aid or training to Ecuador, Jamaica, Bolivia, Cuba, Chile and Venezuela. The JFQ study adds that China has an important and growing presence in the regions military institutions. Most Latin American nations, including Mexico, send officers to professional military education courses in the PRC. In Ecuador, Venezuela and Bolivia, Beijing has begun to sell sophisticated hardwaresuch as radars and K-8 and MA-60 aircraft. The JFQ report concludes, ominously, that Chinese defense firms are likely to leverage their experience and a growing track record for their goods to expand their market share in the region, with the secondary consequence being that those purchasers will become more reliant on the associated Chinese logistics, maintenance, and training infrastructures that support those products. Put it all together, and the southern flank of the United States is exposed to a range of new security challenges. To be sure, much of this is a function of Chinas desire to secure oil markets.
But theres more at work here than Chinas thirst for oil. Like a global chess match, China is probing Latin America and sending a message that just as Washington has trade and military ties in Chinas neighborhood, China is developing trade and military ties in Americas neighborhood.

This is a direct challenge to U.S. primacy in the regiona challenge that must be answered. First,
Washington needs to relearn an obvious truththat Chinas rulers do not share Americas valuesand needs to shape and conduct its China policy in that context. Beijing has no respect for human rights. Recall that in China, an estimated 3-5 million people are rotting away in laogai slave-labor camps, many of them guilty of political dissent or religious activity; democracy activists are rounded up and imprisoned; freedom of speech and religion and assembly do not exist; and internal security forces are given shoot-to-kill orders in dealing with unarmed citizens. Indeed, Beijing viewed the Arab Spring uprisings not as an impetus for political reform, but as reason to launch its harshest crackdown on dissent in at least a decade, according to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. In short, the ends always justify the means in Beijing. And that makes all the difference when it comes to foreign and defense policy. As Reagan counseled during the Cold W ar, There is no true international security without respect for human rights. Second, the

U.S. must stop taking the Western Hemisphere for granted, and instead must reengage in its own neighborhood economically, politically and militarily. That means no more allowing trade dealsand the partners counting on themto languish. Plans for a
hemispheric free trade zone have faltered and foundered. The trade-expansion agreements with Panama and Colombia were left in limbo for

years, before President Obama finally signed them into law in 2011. Reengagement means reviving U.S. diplomacy. The Wall Street Journal reports that due to political wrangling in Washington, the State Department position focused on the Western Hemisphere has been staffed by an interim for nearly a year, while six Western Hemisphere ambassadorial posts (Uruguay, Venezuela, Ecuador, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Barbados) remain empty. Reengagement means reversing plans to slash defense spending. The Joint Forces Command noted in 2008 that China has a deep respect for U.S. military power. We cannot overstate how important this has been to keeping the peace. But with the United States in the midst of massive military retrenchment, one wonders how long that reservoir of respect will last. Reengagement also means revitalizing security ties. A good model to follow might be whats happening in Chinas backyard. To deter China and prevent an accidental war, the U.S. is reviving its security partnerships all across the Asia-Pacific region. Perhaps its time to do the same in Latin America. We should remember that many Latin American countriesfrom Mexico and Panama to Colombia and Chileborder the Pacific. Given Beijings actions, it makes sense to bring these Latin American partners on the Pacific Rim into the alliance of alliances that is already stabilizing the Asia-Pacific region. Finally, all of this needs to be part of a revived Monroe Doctrine. Focusing on Chinese encroachment in the Americas, this Monroe Doctrine 2.0 would make it clear to Beijing that the United States welcomes Chinas efforts to conduct trade in the Americas but discourages any claims of controlimplied or explicitby China over territories, properties or facilities in the Americas. In addition,

Washington should make it clear to Beijing that the American people would look unfavorably upon the sale of Chinese arms or the basing of Chinese advisors or military assets in the Western Hemisphere. In short, what it was true in the 19th and 20th centuries must remain true in the 21st: There is room for only one great power in the Western Hemisphere.

Chinese influence in Latin America is zero-sumChinas growing support sparks Taiwan war
Fergusson 12 Researcher at Royal Society for the Arts, Featured Contributor at International Business Times, Former Conference &
Research Assistant at Security Watch, Former Researcher at University College London, Master of Science, China in the International Arena, The University of Glasgow (Robbie, The Chinese Challenge to the Monroe Doctrine, e-International Relations, 7/23/12, http://www.eir.info/2012/07/23/does-chinese-growth-in-latin-america-threaten-american-interests/)//Bwang Taiwan domestic, or foreign policy? Chinas goals in the region amount to more than the capture of natural resources. Although the Peoples Republic of China considers resolution of the Taiwan issue to be a domestic issue, it is with some irony that one of Chinas

main foreign policy goals is to isolate Taipei internationally. The PRC and the ROC compete directly for international recognition among all the states in the world. Nowhere is this more evident than in Latin America, where 12 of the 23 nations that still have official diplomatic relations with the ROC reside. The historical
background Following the mainland Communist victory in the Chinese Civil War in 1949, the nationalist Kuomintang retreated to the island of Formosa (Taiwan) where it continued to claim to be the legitimate government of all of China. In June 1950 the United States intervened by placing its 7th fleet in the Taiwan straits to stop a conclusive military resolution to the civil war and slowly the battlefield became primarily political, concerned with legitimacy. When the United Nations was formed in 1945, the Republic of China (ROC) became one of the five permanent members of the Security Council. This gave the ROC a de facto advantage over the PRC in attaining recognition from other nation states; particularly as the diplomatic clout of the hegemonic United States supported its position as the true representative of the Chinese people, until the rapprochement of the 1970s, when the Nixon administration wished to improve ties with the de facto rulers of China in order to exploit the Sino-Soviet split. UN Resolution 2758 granted the China seat to the PRC at the expense of the ROC who were in effect exiled from the organization, and the famous 1972 visit of President Nixon to China further added legitimacy to the communist regime. All this resulted in a thawing of world opinion, and gradually as the durability and permanence of the PRC regime became ingrained, countries began switching their diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing. The economics of international recognition In the Americas, the PRC had international recognition and longstanding support from ideological allies such as Cuba. However, the

ROC has maintained more diplomatic support in the Americas than any other region, mainly due to the small nature of the states involved and the importance of Taiwanese aid to their economies. Li notes that from the late 1980s to the early
1990s, roughly 10 percent of Taiwans direct foreign investment (FDI) went to Latin America and the Caribbean, *51+ highlighting the concerted effort made in the region. Economic

solidarity is increasingly important to the formation of the Taiwan-Latin America relationship, for two reasons. The first is that for Latin American states, the decision of which China to support is less ideological and political than it ever has been; which makes the decision a straight up economic zero-sum choice. The second is that Latin America is home to natural resources which are of great significance to the hungry growing economies of the PRC and the ROC regardless of international recognition. However, while the decision is not political for Latin American countries, for Taiwan, every country which switches its recognition to the PRC damages its legitimacy as a nation state in the international arena. The Table below shows the designation of
diplomatic recognition in the region in 2008. Countries Recognising the PRC (China)Countries Recognising the ROC (Taiwan)Central AmericaMexico, Costa RicaEl Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, PanamaCaribbeanAntigua & Barbuda, Bahamas, Barbados, Cuba, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, Suriname, Trinidad & TobagoBelize, Dominican Republic, Haiti, St Kitts & Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent & the GrenadinesSouth AmericaArgentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Uruguay, VenezuelaParaguay On the other hand, for

the PRC, every state which withdraws its support for the ROC takes it one step closer to being in a position

where it can resolve the Taiwan issue unilaterally. Subsequently, undermining Taiwan is of the utmost importance to China, and it has taken to outbidding Taiwan in offers of foreign aid, a strategy made possible by the decline in aid from the defunct Soviet Union, and the West, which is pre occupied with terrorism and the Middle East. Li notes that the regions leaders have turned to Asia for help to promote trade and financial assistance, and consequently played the PRC and Taiwan against each other. *53+ Despite its smaller size, Taiwan has fared remarkably
well in this bidding war; focusing its aid investments on infrastructure such as stadiums in St Kitts & Nevis for the Cricket World Cup in 2007.

However, even Taiwans economy can be put under strain by the seemingly relentless stream of foreign aid which has brought only debateable and mild gains to the Taiwanese cause. This has contributed to the PRC picking off the few remaining supporters of the ROC take for example, the Dominican case. In early 2004, Commonwealth of Dominica asked Taipei for a $58
million aid, which is unrelated to public welfare. The Caribbean nation had relied on Taiwan to develop its agriculture-based economy since 1983. Diplomatic relationship was soon broken after Taipei turned down the request. [54] This incident showcased the fact that in economic terms, the PRC is winning the battle for Latin America. Political strategies of the PRC In political terms too; the PRC is in an advantageous position, thanks in part again to its position within the UN. While it can be argued that China provides incentives but does not threaten harm to induce countries to defect from recognizing Taiwan, *55] the

reality is that the use of force and direct harm are not the only means available to an economic entity as powerful as China. It refuses to maintain official relations with any state that recognises the ROC; an action which can be quite prohibitive to the country being able to take advantage of the growing Chinese market. Although Domngu ez suggests that the PRC
has not been punitive toward those states that still recognize the Republic of China (Taiwan), *56+ the legitimacy of this claim has to be brought into question for example in June 1996, China fought the extension of the UN mission in Haiti, to punish the Caribbean nation for its appeal for UN acceptance of Taiwan. *57+ This

incident showed that China is prepared to use its global clout to play spoiler and apply indirect pressure on countries to adopt its position. Similarly, Chinas experience with one-party rule
has taught it the importance of party-to-party relations in addition to state-to-state relations, further cementing the PRC by establishing a relationship based on goodwill and common understanding. Indeed by the start of 1998 the CCP had established relations with almost all major political parties in the countries that were Taiwans diplomatic allies in Latin America, *58+ further isolating the ROC. The effect on American interests Were

the ROC to be deserted by its remaining allies in Latin America, the USA would be disadvantaged in attempting to maintain the status quo across the Taiwan Strait. A Taiwan that was not recognised by any state from the Americas, or Europe (with the exception of the Vatican) would not be seen as a genuine sovereign entity whose defence would be more important than the upkeep of good relations between China and the West. As Chinas economic and political position in the world improves vis--vis both America and Taiwan, so might its ambitions. The U.S.A might find itself in a position where it could no longer withstand the diplomatic pressure to allow the PRC to conclude a settlement on Taiwan, perhaps by force.

Taiwan crisis is coming soonany Chinese shift sparks conflict and draws in US
Mazza 13 Research fellow in foreign and defense policy at the American Enterprise Institute (Michael, Four Surprises That Could Rock
Asia in 2013, Foreign Policy, 1/3/13, http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/01/03/four_surprises_that_could_rock_asia_in_2013?page=full)//Bwang Since President Ma Ying-jeou came to power in 2008, Taipei

and Beijing have improved ties and deepened their economic integration: cross-strait trade reached $127.6 billion in 2011, an increase of more than 13 percent from 2010. Some national security experts misinterpret this trend, thinking that growing economic interdependence will overwhelm factors pushing the two sides apart, and that interdependence will provide Beijing with leverage it can use to compel unification. But while Taiwan's businesspeople enjoy closer ties with China, the average Taiwanese voter continues to move toward independence. Over the last 20 years, the portion of citizens of Taiwan identifying as "Taiwanese" has increased from 17.6 percent of
those polled in 1992 to a whopping 53.7 percent today; those identifying as "Chinese" has declined over the same period from 25.5 percent to just 3.1 percent today. Support for independence has nearly doubled over the last two decades, from 11.1 percent to 19.6 percent. Support for immediate or eventual unification, meanwhile, has more than halved, from 20 percent in 1992 to 9.8 percent in 2012. Economic

integration is apparently failing to halt what Beijing sees as a troubling trend. With a crossstrait trade agreement and a slew of other, easier deals already on the books, Beijing now expects Ma to discuss political issues. But Ma doesn't have the domestic political support to pursue political talks -- in March 2012, two months
after his reelection, 45 percent of those polled said the pace of cross-strait exchanges was "just right," but the share of respondents answering "too fast" had increased to 32.6 percent, from 25.7 percent before the election. Any

Chinese shift toward a more strident Taiwan policy could portend a new crisis in the Taiwan Strait sooner than many expect, as a lack of

progress on these issues may buttress hawks in the new Xi Jinping administration. And America would surely be dragged in: Even low-level coercive measures against Taiwan -- a top 10 U.S. trading partner and security ally -- could throw U.S.-China relations into a tailspin.

Taiwan is the most probable scenario of conflict between US and Chinacauses nuclear escalation and miscalculation
Lowther 13 Citing a report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (William, Taiwan could spark nuclear war: report,
Taipei Times, 3/16/13, http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2013/03/16/2003557211)//Bwang

Taiwan is the most likely potential crisis that could trigger a nuclear war between China and the US, a new academic report concludes. Taiwan remains the single most plausible and dangerous source of tension and conflict between the US and China, says the 42-page report by the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Prepared by the CSIS Project on Nuclear Issues and resulting from a year-long study, the report emphasizes that Beijing continues to be set on a policy to prevent Taiwans independence, while at the same time the US maintains the capability to come to Taiwans defense. Although tensions across the Taiwan Strait have subsided since both Taipei and Beijing embraced a policy of engagement in 2008, the situation remains combustible, complicated by rapidly diverging cross-strait military capabilities and persistent political disagreements, the report says. In a footnote, it quotes senior fellow at the US Council on Foreign Relations Richard Betts describing Taiwan as the main potential flashpoint for the US in East Asia. The report also quotes Betts as saying that neither Beijing nor Washington can fully control developments that might ignite a Taiwan crisis. This is a classic recipe for surprise, miscalculation and uncontrolled escalation, Betts wrote in a separate study of his own. The CSIS study says: For the foreseeable future Taiwan is the contingency in which nuclear weapons would most likely become a major factor, because the fate of the island is intertwined both with the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party and the reliability of US defense commitments in the Asia-Pacific region. Titled Nuclear Weapons and US-China Relations, the study says disputes in the East
and South China seas appear unlikely to lead to major conflict between China and the US, but they do provide kindling for potential conflict between the two nations because the disputes implicate a number of important regional interests, including the interests of treaty allies of the US. The danger posed by flashpoints such as Taiwan, the Korean Peninsula and maritime demarcation disputes is magnified by the potential for mistakes, the study says. Although Beijing and Washington have agreed to a range of crisis management mechanisms, such as the Military Maritime Consultative Agreement and the establishment of a direct hotline between the Pentagon and the Ministry of Defense, the

bases for miscommunication and misunderstanding remain and draw on deep historical reservoirs of suspicion, the report says. For example, it says, it is unclear whether either side understands what kinds of actions would result in a military or even nuclear response by the other party. To make things worse, neither side seems to believe the others declared policies and intentions, suggesting that escalation management, already a very uncertain endeavor, could be especially difficult in any conflict, it says.

Sino-Cuban Rels High

Sino-Cuban relations high now
Sullivan, 13 Cuba: U.S. Policy and Issues for the 113th Congress Mark P. Sullivan Specialist in Latin American Affairs March 29, 2013
Congressional Research Service, http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/R43024.pdf//JH

Relations with China have also increased in recent years. Chinese President Hu Jintao visited Cuba in November 2008, signing a dozen agreements, while Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping visited Cuba in June 2011. During the Xi Jinping visit, China signed a letter of intent to invest in upgrading a Cuban oil refinery in Cienfuegos. In July 2012, President Castro visited China on a four-day visit; the two countries reportedly signed eight cooperation agreements, and talks reportedly focused on trade and investment issues. (After China, Castro
visited Vietnam on a four-day trip. The two countries have long had good relations, and some observers speculate that Cuba looks to Vietnam for potential lessons in implementing economic reforms.)

China and Cuba are fully intertwined

Currie 8 (Duncan, political expert for the Weekly Standard, Cuba after Fidel, 3/3/08, Proquest, MDM) While Fidel has disavowed the Chinese economic model, Ral is said to favor it. The Wall Street Journal reported
in November 2006 that "Ral has traveled to China a number of times to study Beijing's economic policies, and in 2003 he invited the leading economic adviser to China's then-premier Zhu Rongji, who played a leading role in opening up China to foreign trade and investment, to give a

China is cranking up its investment in Cuba and boosting bilateral ties. There seems little doubt that Cuba's new leaders will seek to borrow from the Chinese blueprint and mix political repression with expanded economic freedoms. But they will do so warily, and probably through piecemeal reforms (starting with agriculture).
series of lectures in Cuba." Ral also supported the modest free-market initiatives devised by Lage in the early 1990s.

China is building strong military ties with Cuba BBC 12 (China, Cuba vow to boost military cooperation, BBC Monitoring Asia Pacific, 9/16/12, Lexis)//Bwang BEIJING, 14 September: China and Cuba agreed to further deepen military cooperation as a Cuban senior general visited Beijing on Friday [14 September]. Joaquin Quintas, Vice Minister of Cuba's Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR), said that the Cuban side is willing to enhance exchanges with the Chinese military and strengthen bilateral cooperation in personnel training and other areas. In Friday's talks with Quintas, Ma Xiaotian, deputy chief of general staff of the People's Liberation Army (PLA), said that China-Cuba relations have withstood the test of time and international vicissitudes since the two countries established diplomatic relations in 1960, adding that the willingness of their armed forces to strengthen bilateral ties is unwavering. The PLA attaches great importance to developing relations with the FAR, according to Ma. Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission Guo Boxiong and Defence Minister Liang Guanglie also met with Quintas. Developing bilateral military relations is in accordance with the fundamental interests of the two countries and peoples, Guo said, stressing that China is ready to work with Cuba to strengthen friendship and enhance cooperation. Liang, also China's State Councillor, said the Chinese government has always attached great importance to developing a friendship with Cuba, noting that military cooperation is conducive to the two countries' national security and development interests. The Cuban side is very pleased to see China's progress and achievements, Quintas said, vowing that Cuba will always adhere to the one-China policy and support China to safeguard national unity and territorial integrity.

Plan K/
Now is keyChina is shoring up influence, but the US is dragging behind
Boston Globe 13 (Cubas reforms pave way for new US policy, too, Boston Globe, 2/9/13,
http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/editorials/2013/02/09/cuba-reform-create-opportunity-drag-policy-intocentury/xER2NTTXGsxdLej0miHwFM/story.html)

Relations between the United States and Cuba have been stuck since the United States imposed a full economic embargo in 1962, and during the election season neither President Obama nor Mitt Romney signaled much desire to change the status quo. Yet while Americans have been looking elsewhere, significant change has come to Cuba. The communist government of the ruling Castro brothers, Fidel and Raul, is in the midst of a slow experiment to promote economic entrepreneurship. Late last year, Cuba instituted reforms to its immigration policies that allow Cubans to travel abroad freely and allow those who have emigrated or fled to return home. These changes, and the beginning of Obamas second term, create an unusual opportunity to acknowledge Cubas gestures and respond in a substantive way. Rather than simply extend policies that, in five decades, have failed to dislodge the Castros, the Obama
administration has a chance to drag US policy into the 21st century. The Cuban-American population, which has historically opposed any loosening of US policy, is no longer monolithic. Supporting greater contact with friends, family, and the Cuban economy now animates a younger generation of Florida voters. Because of this trend, Obama who performed nearly as well with Cuban-American voters as Romney has more maneuvering room politically. The first step would be to end the silly claim, reinstated by the Obama administration last summer, that Cuba remains a state sponsor of terrorism. The administration argued that Cuba harbored members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. It has, but the FARC and Colombia are now in negotiations; those peace talks are supported by the Obama White House in order to end a bloody civil war. By depoliticizing the Cuba portfolio, the United States could then begin to lessen trade restrictions, starting with promoting cultural exchanges; ending the travel ban; and eventually allowing for trade in oil, gas, and other commodities. Over time, billions of dollars in new trade between the two nations will benefit both. This would include boosts to US farm companies while helping Cubans. Direct

relations would also further US national security and environmental interests; as Cuba opens up, other countries will sweep in to seek influence, as China has already done. Especially as Cuba increasingly promotes offshore drilling and other maritime exploration, the United States must improve communication with Havana. Currently, even though the United States and Cuba are separated by a narrow channel, the two countries have no bilateral communications to ensure safety standards for their mutual protection from oil spills. Secretary of State John Kerry should make Cuba a focus of his first months in office. Unfortunately, his successor as chairman of the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee is Robert Menendez of New Jersey, a son of Cuban immigrants who has opposed the administrations efforts to ease relations. Menendez will need to be convinced that he can help Cubans more by resetting American policy. Absent military intervention, there are very few opportunities for a president to dramatically alter relations with a historic foe; Obama has taken such advantage of a disorientingly rapid liberalization by Burmas military rulers. Raul

Castros recent decision to lift travel restrictions on Cuban citizens is similarly momentous and signals that the timing is ripe for a new diplomatic agenda with Cuba.

Cuban Economy

Cuban Economy 1AC

Cubas economic instability is skyrocketing with the election of Maduro in Venezuela
French 13 (Anya Landau, editor of and a frequent contributor to The Havana Note, Can Cuba Survive the Loss of Chavez, 3/6/13,
http://thehavananote.com/node/1067, MDM At the same time, it became clear to any honest observer inside or outside Cuba that the nation

was headed for serious trouble; relying so singularly on the largesse of Hugo Chavez could have perilous consequences. When Raul Castro took the reins from his ailing older brother provisionally in 2006 and then formally in 2008, he focused, for the first time publicly, on the need for deep changes. The economic downturn of 2008, coming as it did with soaring world food prices and a punishing hurricane
season (in which Cuba was walloped by four major storms that wipes out food stores and hundreds of thousands of homes), brought the reality starkly home. The younger Castros rhetoric has been consistent and tough on economic mismanagement and corruption, but his apparent desire for consensus building (and avoiding destabilizing shocks that could jeopardize power) coupled with his inability to rein in a reluctant bureaucracy meant that Cubas economic restructuring has been slow and largely ineffectual so far. Key reforms in real estate and migration, which offer many Cubans unprecedented potential economic empowerment and mobility, and also leverage an increasingly reconnected diaspora, offer hope of more and deeper reform, but other reforms, such as in expanding the non-state sector and reforming the tax code, have been too piecemeal or conservative so far. Not unsurprisingly, many in and out of Cuba now wonder if the loss of Chavez is the death knell of the Castros Revolution, or, perhaps could it inject urgent momentum into Raul Castros reform agenda, just in the nick of time? In some ways, the loss of Hugo Chavez, on its face so devastating for Cuba, might actually be a good thing for the island. With Nicolas Maduro a favorite to win the special presidential election a month from now, Cuba will likely retain significant influence. But Maduro

is no Chavez. Hell have to focus on building up his own political capital, without the benefit of Chavezs maintain power he will almost certainly need to respond to increasing economic pressures at home with more pragmatic and domestically focused economic policies. And that likelihood, as well as the possibility that the Venezuelan opposition could win back power either now or in the medium term, should drive Cuban leaders to speed up and bravely deepen their tenuous economic reforms on the island. And if there was any hesitancy among Cuba's leaders to open more space between the island and Chavez, they now have the
charisma. While he surely wont cut Cuba off, to opportunity to do so. Under Raul Castro, Cuba has mended and expanded foreign relations the world over. Particularly if it shows greater pragmatism in its economic policies, countries such as China will no doubt increase economic engagement of the island.

Lifting the embargo is the key internal link to a successful transition of Cubas economy
Ashby 4/1 (Timothy, Senior Research Fellow at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, Commentary: Preserving stability in Cuba after
normalizing relations with the US, 4/1/13, http://www.caribbeannewsnow.com/headline-Commentary%3A-Preserving-stability-in-Cuba-afternormalizing-relations-with-the-US-15197.html, MDM)

Cuba under Ral Castro has entered a new period of economic, social, and political transformation.
Reforms instituted within the past few years have brought the expansion of private sector entrepreneurial activity, including lifting restrictions on the sales of residential real estate, automobiles, and electronic goods. Additional reforms included, more than a million hectares of idle land has been leased to private farmers, where citizens have been granted permission to stay in hotels previously reserved for tourists, and freedom being granted for most Cubans to travel abroad. Stating

that it was time for the gradual transfer of key roles to new generations, President Ral Castro announced that he will retire by 2018, and named as his possible successor a man who was not even born at the time of the Cuban Revolution. [1] The twilight of the Castro era presents challenges and opportunities for US policy makers. Normalization of relations is inevitable, regardless of timing, yet external and internal factors may accelerate or retard the process. The death of Venezuelan President Hugo Chvez is likely to undermine the already dysfunctional Cuban economy, if it leads to reductions in oil imports and other forms of aid. This could bring social chaos, especially among the islands disaffected youth. Such an outcome would generate adverse consequences for US national and regional security. To maintain Cubas social and economic stability while reforms are maturing, the United States must throw itself open to unrestricted bilateral trade with all Cuban enterprises, both private and state-owned. The collapse of Cubas tottering economy could seismically impact the United States and neighboring countries. It certainly did during the Mariel Boatlift of 1980, precipitated by a downturn in the Cuban economy which led to tensions on the

island. Over 125,000 Cuban refugees landed in the Miami area, including 31,000 criminals and mental patients. Today, the United States defines its national security interests regarding Cuba as follows: Avoid one or more mass migrations; Prevent Cuba from becoming another porous border that allows continuous large-scale migration to the hemisphere; Prevent Cuba from becoming a major source or transshipment point for the illegal drug trade; Avoid Cuba becoming a state with ungoverned spaces that could provide a platform for terrorists and others wishing to harm the United States. [2] All of these national

security threats are directly related to economic and social conditions within Cuba. US policy specifically supports a market-oriented economic system *3+ toward
Cuba, yet regulations prohibit the importation of any goods of Cuban origin, whether from the islands potentially booming private sector including 300,000 agricultural producers or State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs). *4+ Such a policy is counterproductive to US interests. Regardless of over 400,000 entrepreneurs, including agricultural cultivators, it could be many years, if ever, when Cubas private sector would be ready to serve as the engine of economic growth. SOEs employ 72 percent of Cuban workers. [5] A

rational commercial rapprochement towards Cuba would therefore require a change in current laws and in the system of regulations prohibiting the importation of Cuban goods and products. Normalized bilateral trade will benefit the Cuban people by helping to provide economic stability and fostering the growth of a middle class both of which are essential for the foundation of democratic institutions. Two-way trade must include
both Cubas private sector as well as SOEs. Cuban SOEs are in a state of gradual transition like other parts of the economy. In December 2012, the Cuban government authorized a wide range of co-ops that will allow workers to collectively open new businesses or take over existing SOEs in construction, transportation, and other industries. Considered a pilot program that is a prime candidate for an expansion, the co-ops will not be administratively subordinated to any state entity. *6+ Many

Cuban officials, well aware of the limits to small-scale entrepreneurism, appear to harbor hope that co-ops could shift a large portion of the islands economy to free-market competition from government-managed socialism. In other transitional states, particularly in postsocialist economies, co-ops have served as commercial bridges between state-owned and privatized business. Of the 300 largest co-ops in the world, more than half are in United States, Italy, or France. [7] Ironically, the outputs of such co-ops, including agricultural products which could find strong demand in the American market, are barred by short-sighted federal regulations, thus hampering, if not defeating, what could be a major US policy goal. The United States has been actively trading with foreign SOEs for years. China, a one party, communist state, is the United Statess second largest trading partner, and Chinese SOEs account for a large percentage of the nearly $400 billion USD in goods exported to America each year. Venezuela is in the top fifteen of US trading partners, and the bulk of that countrys exports are petroleum products deriving from the state-owned PDVSA (which in turn owns Houston-based CITCO oil company). Another communist country, Vietnam which initially was the subject of a US economic embargo similar to that imposed on Cuba is the second largest source of US clothing imports and a major manufacturing source for footwear, furniture, and electrical machinery. [8] On these matters, the Cuban government has said that it wants to replicate the paths of Vietnam and China. *9+ Of relevance to Cuban trade relations, Vietnam has formally requested to be added to the US Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) program as a beneficiary developing country, which authorizes the US president to grant duty-free treatment for eligible products. The statute also provides the president with specific political and economic criteria to use, when designating eligible countries and products. Communist countries are not eligible for GSP membership unless the president determines that certain conditions have been met, including whether the applicant is dominated or controlled by international communism. Furthermore, countries that fail to recognize internationally accepted workers rights are excluded. *10+ US statutes do not provide a general definition of a communist country, and the Obama administration is expected to declare that Vietnam is no longer communist in terms of its economic system. The argument will be that even if Vietnam is a communist country (hard to deny, considering it has one party government that is officially titled the Communist Party of Vietnam), it is not dominated or controlled by international communism because no such entity exists following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Similar arguments may be applied to Cuba in considering normalized relations with the United States. At the request of the US Congress, the General Accounting Office (GAO) conducted detailed reviews of the frameworks for seven key statutes that govern Cuban sanctions. [11] The resulting reports concluded that (i) the

president still maintains broad discretion to make additional modifications to Cuban sanctions; and (ii) prior measures, implemented by the executive branch have had the effect of easing specific restrictions of the Cuba sanctions and have been consistent with statutory mandates as well as within the discretionary authority of the president. [12] Some legal scholars assert that absence of such explicit statutory provisions in other areas suggests
that Congress did not intend to prohibit the executive branch from issuing general or specific licenses to authorize certain transactions with Cuba when such licenses are deemed to be appropriate and consistent with US policies. *13+ Although a complex variety of federal statutes have re-stated the regulatory prohibition on importation of Cuban goods under 31 CFR 515.204, enabling legislation to codify the restriction, has not been passed. For example, 22 USC 6040(a) notes that 31 CFR 515.204 prohibits the importation of goods from Cuba, but does not codify or expressly prohibit such activity, and 22 USC 7028 acknowledges that Congress did not attempt to alter any prohibitions on the importation of goods from Cuba under 31 CFR 515.204. [14] The complete

dismantling of the Cuban economic embargo will undoubtedly require congressional legislation; however, the president has broad powers to modify policy towards Cuba, particularly in an emergency situation that could affect US national security. [15+ For example, imports of Cuban origin goods are prohibited under the Cuban Asset Control Regulations (CACRS) except as
specifically authorized by the Secretary of the Treasury by means of regulations, rulings, instructions, licenses or otherwise. *16] Such authority could allow the president to argue for the modification of 31 C.F.R. 204s complete prohibition on the importation of Cuban goods by stating that Cuban exports to the United States help the Cuban people by creating employment and thereby maintaining the islands social stability. Considering the domestic political constituency and the political obduracy of US Congress, a

more realistic presidential

rationale for allowing Cuban imports from all types of enterprises could be the protection of US borders during an era of grave concerns about homeland security. Some policy analysts suggest that bilateral trade with Cuba
should be restricted to businesses and individuals engaged in certifiably independent (i.e. non-state) economic activity. [17] While wellintentioned, such a policy would likely have a negligible impact on Cubas economic development and fails to recognize that commercial enterprises that the US government would classify as SOEs are actually co-ops or other types of quasi-independent entities that are in the early stages of privatization. Restrictions such as this also fail to address larger national and regional security concerns which are the primary responsibility of the president. Although ultimately the Cuban people must freely choose their own political and economic systems, President Obama should be seen as having legal authority to support the transition taking place on the island by opening US markets to Cuban imports.

Normalized bilateral trade will benefit the Cuban people and help to provide economic and social stability that is in turn vital to US national and regional security. Such trade must include both the islands small, yet growing, private sector and State-Owned Enterprises. In this regard, it would be both unfair and
strategically unwise to treat Cuba differently from its stated models, China and Vietnam.

Well isolate two internal links First private sector and SOE trade
Ashby 13 Senior Research Fellow at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs; served in the U.S. Commerce Departments International Trade
Administration as Director of the Office of Mexico and the Caribbean and as acting Deputy Assistant Secretary of Commerce for the Western Hemisphere; a counsel with the international law firm Dentons; he has PhD, JD and MBA degrees (Dr. Timothy, Preserving Stability in Cuba After Normalizing Relations with the United States The Importance of Trading with State-Owned Enterprises, Council of Hemispheric Affairs, 3/29/13, http://www.coha.org/preserving-stability-in-cuba-timothy-ashby/)//Bwang

U.S. policy specifically supports a market-oriented economic system [3] toward Cuba, yet regulations prohibit the importation of any goods of Cuban origin, whether from the islands potentially booming private sectorincluding 300,000 agricultural producersor State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs). *4+ Such a policy is
counterproductive to U.S. interests. Regardless of over 400,000 entrepreneurs, including agricultural cultivators, it could be many years, if ever, when Cubas

private sector would be ready to serve as the engine of economic growth. SOEs employ 72 percent of Cuban workers. [5] A rational commercial rapprochement towards Cuba would therefore require a change in current laws and in the system of regulations prohibiting the importation of Cuban goods and products. Normalized bilateral trade will benefit the Cuban people by helping to provide economic stability and fostering the growth of a middle classboth of which are essential for the foundation of democratic institutions. Two-way trade must include both Cubas private sector as well as SOEs. Cuban SOEs are in a state of gradual transition like other parts of the economy. In December 2012, the Cuban government authorized a wide range of co-ops that will allow workers to collectively open new businesses or take over existing SOEs in construction, transportation, and other industries. Considered a pilot program that is a prime candidate for an expansion, the co-ops will not be administratively subordinated to any state entity. [6] Many Cuban officials, well aware of the limits to small-scale entrepreneurism, appear to harbor hope that co-ops could shift a large portion of the islands economy to free-market competition from governmentmanaged socialism. In other transitional states, particularly in post-socialist economies, co-ops have served as commercial bridges between state-owned and privatized business. Of the 300 largest co-ops in the world, more than half are in United States, Italy, or France. [7] Ironically,

the outputs of such co-ops, including agricultural products which could find strong demand in the American market, are barred by short-sighted federal regulations, thus hampering, if not defeating, what could be a major U.S. policy goal.

Second US agriculture investments

Williams, 02 agricultural lawyer (Alexander Williams III, MORE ASSISTANCE PLEASE: LIFTING THE CUBAN
EMBARGO MAY HELP REVIVE AMERICAN FARMS, Drake Journal of Agricultural Law, pages 469-470) KD

The Cuban economy is in terrible shape.132 Presently, the Cuban economy has stagnated because its primary benefactor, the
former Soviet Union, is no longer able to provide it significant financial support.133 Again, between 1989 and 1990, Cuba lost its major commercial markets together with the Soviet subsidies it had been receiving.134 Moreover, from 1959 to 1994, Cubas GNP fell from U.S. $32.5 billion to U.S. $ 18.6 billion.135 During that same time, the total worth of Cubas exports fell from U.S. $5.4 billion to U.S. $1.7 billion.136 However, despite

its current economic crisis, investors still see great financial promise in the Cuban market.137 Even though Cubas economy is in shambles, agencies such as the American Farm Bureau

Federation believe that Cuba could eventually become a market for American farmers.138 Especially because Cuba desperately needs food products, farming tools and machinery.139 Thus, the Cuban Government is desperately welcoming foreign investment and commercial trade.140 Fidel Castro has already initiated some economic reform by allowing foreign investors to partake in all of Cubas industries.141 Furthermore, other government officials have been campaigning and encouraging foreign investors that Cuba has a bright future ahead of them and that it will be safe for them to invest in Cuba.142 Many companies and foreign investors seem to agree with the Cuban Vice Presidents assessment and have taken advantage.143 For example, *c+ompanies from Mexico, Canada, Spain, Great
Britain, France, and Australia have all begun to invest in Cuba and support its development.144

Cuban collapse causes Latin American instability and terror attacks

Gorrell 5 (Tim, Lieutenant Colonel, CUBA: THE NEXT UNANTICIPATED ANTICIPATED STRATEGIC CRISIS? 3/18/5, http://www.dtic.mil/cgibin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA433074)

Regardless of the succession, under the current U.S. policy, Cubas problems of a post Castro transformation only worsen. In addition to Cubans on the island, there will be those in exile who will return claiming authority. And there are remnants of the dissident community within Cuba who will attempt to exercise similar authority. A power vacuum or absence of order will create the conditions for instability and civil war . Whether Raul or another successor from within the current government can hold power is debatable. However, that individual will nonetheless extend the current policies for an indefinite period, which will only compound the Cuban situation. When Cuba finally collapses anarchy is a strong possibility if the U.S. maintains the wait and see approach. The U.S. then must deal with an unstable country 90 miles off its coast. In the midst of this chaos, thousands will flee the island.
containment policy, the During the Mariel boatlift in 1980 125,000 fled the island.26 Many were criminals; this

time the number could be

several hundred thousand flee ing to the U.S., creating a refugee crisis. Equally important, by adhering to a negative U.S. may be creating its next series of transnational criminal problems. Cuba is along the axis of the drug-trafficking flow into the U.S. from Columbia. The Castro government as a matter of policy does not support the drug trade. In fact, Cubas actions have shown that its stance on drugs is more than hollow rhetoric as indicated by its increasing seizure of drugs 7.5 tons in 1995, 8.8 tons in 1999, and 13 tons in 2000.27 While there may be individuals within the government and outside who engage in drug trafficking and a percentage of drugs entering the U.S. may pass through Cuba, the Cuban government is not the path of least resistance for the flow of drugs. If there were no Cuban restraints, the flow of drugs to the U.S. could be greatly facilitated by a Cuba base of operation and accelerate considerably. In the midst of an unstable Cuba, the opportunity for radical fundamentalist groups to operate in the region increases. If these groups can export terrorist activity from Cuba to the U.S. or throughout the hemisphere then the war against this extremism gets more complicated . Such activity could increase direct attacks and disrupt the economies, threatening the stability of the fragile democracies that are budding throughout the region. In light of a failed state in the region, the U.S. may be forced to deploy military forces to Cuba, creating the conditions for another insurgency . The ramifications of this action could very well fuel greater anti-American sentiment throughout the Americas. A proactive policy now can mitigate these potential future problems.
U.S. domestic political support is also turning against the current negative policy. The Cuban American population in the U.S. totals 1,241,685 or 3.5% of the population.28 Most of these exiles reside in Florida; their influence has been a factor in determining the margin of victory in the past two presidential elections. But this election strategy may be flawed, because recent polls of Cuban Americans reflect a decline for President Bush based on his policy crackdown. There is a clear softening in the Cuban-American community with regard to sanctions. Younger Cuban Americans do not necessarily subscribe to the hard-line approach. These changes signal an opportunity for a new approach to U.S.-Cuban relations. (Table 1) The time has come to look realistically at the Cuban issue. Castro will rule until he dies. The only issue is what happens then? The

U.S. can little afford to be distracted by a failed state 90 miles off its coast. The administration, given the present state of world affairs, does not have the luxury or the resources to pursue the traditional American model of crisis management. The President and other government and military leaders have warned that the GWOT will be long and protracted. These warnings were sounded when the administration did not anticipate operations in Iraq consuming so many military, diplomatic and economic resources. There is justifiable concern that Africa and the Caucasus region are potential hot spots for terrorist activity, so these areas should be secure. North Korea will continue to be an

unpredictable crisis in waiting. We also cannot ignore China . What if China resorts to aggression to resolve the Taiwan situation? Will the U.S. go to war over Taiwan? Additionally, Iran could conceivably be the next target for U.S. pre-emptive action. These are known and potential situations that could easily require all or many of the elements of national power to resolve. In view of such global issues, can the U.S. afford to sustain the status quo and simply let the Cuban situation play out? The U.S. is at a crossroads: should the policies of the past 40 years remain in
effect with vigor? Or should the U.S. pursue a new approach to Cuba in an effort to facilitate a manageable transition to post-Castro Cuba?

Now Key
Chavezs death means Cubas economy is about to go down the drainnow is the key time to increase engagement
Castor 13 U.S. Representative for Florida's 14th congressional district, serving in Congress (Kathy, WHAT I LEARNED IN CUBA, Tampa
Bay, 5/19/13, Lexis)//Bwang

The flight from Florida to Cuba is a little over an hour, yet the countries remain a world apart. Cuba is changing, however, as I learned on my recent fact-finding visit. Cuba has embarked on meaningful economic reforms, which deserve encouragement by the United States, not continued isolation. President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry have a window of opportunity to engage and encourage reform in Cuba and should act now. Cuba has instituted significant changes to its economy through decentralization and some private ownership of property and private business, such as restaurants (paladares), private lodging (casas particulares), construction and other self-created small businesses (cuentapropistas). Reforms also are also under way in Cuba's agricultural sector. I met with several Cubans who now work for themselves and are creating employment opportunities for other Cubans, which increases autonomy and self-determination. Cuba's decision to eliminate most travel restrictions is
modestly increasing mobility, earning power and the ability to provide financial support for their families. These developments remind me of the historic economic changes since the 1980s in the former Soviet bloc countries, and in China and Vietnam over the past 25 years. Indeed, I traveled to the former East Germany and Czechoslovakia in 1990 after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Velvet Revolution. The United States was directly engaged with those nations during their transition, and Americans were free to travel and interact with their people. American legal and economic experts and businesses directly aided the transition to greater freedom and personal economic opportunity. If

America officially acknowledged changes under way in Cuba, it would strengthen the hands of Cubans who want these reforms to succeed, and we could encourage Cuba to go further and faster. America also should capitalize on economic changes occurring outside Cuba. One of Cuba's primary benefactors, Hugo Chavez, is gone and it is unlikely that Venezuela will have the capacity to continue to provide billions of dollars in economic aid and petroleum products to Cuba. In fact, in the Tampa Bay area, I know of recent immigrants who cite the fear of losing Venezuelan support and returning to another "special period" as their reason for leaving the island.
During my visit, Cuban officials made it clear to me they would like the embargo lifted and that they seek an improved relationship. America's allies in the Western Hemisphere have encouraged the United States to do so. Cuba

and its citizens are more than a decade behind with respect to the Internet and broadband. Expansion of this advanced technology will be slow, but the improvement to human rights and efficiencies to Cuban society could be enormous.

Education Internal
The embargos unrelenting hold on the Cuban economy kills education opportunities for the youth
Walsh 96 (Edward, Chaplain at North Carolina State University and member of the Ecumenical Project for International Cooperation and of
the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America, An embargo's devastating impact on higher education in Cuba, 3/22/96, Proquest, MDM) Imagine, if you can, teaching courses in United States history and American life and culture without students. Further, imagine that your university's library contains no

any textbooks for your resources for research in your subject area. Such were the conditions that I encountered last September, when I began a semester-long visiting professorship at the University of Matanzas, in Matanzas, Cuba. As the first North American to be approved by Cuba's Ministry' of Higher Education and the Cuban Communist Party to teach at this 24-year-old Cuban university, I witnessed firsthand the devastating effects of the U.S. embargo on virtually every sector of Cuban society and, particularly, on Cuban universities. Our 35-year-old embargo prohibits
U.S. companies from trading with Cuba. The embargo covers medicine, food, technology, and all petroleum products. It also generally bars U.S. citizens from traveling to Cuba and greatly restricts the travel of Cubans to this country. The Cuban military's downing a few weeks ago of two small airplanes piloted by members of Brothers to the Rescue, an anti-Castro organization made up of Cuban exiles, briefly focused national attention again on our political stalemate with Cuba. But the scrutiny

did nothing to educate the public about the extreme economic and educational hardships that our embargo continues to produce on the island. The most basic resources, such as pencils, ballpoint pens, notepads, chalk, erasers, paper products, and printed materials of all kinds, were in desperately short supply when I was in Cuba. In some classes, as many as 20 students shared two textbooks. Most of the
texts I saw were worn and out of date. Fourteen English professors shared one English dictionary. Daily power blackouts disrupted lectures. Professors typed exams on stencils using 40-year-old typewriters. Computers are a distant dream for the vast majority of professors and students. And it

is hard for students and faculty members to concentrate on intellectual pursuits, because of other effects of the U. S. embargo. Because of a shortage of petroleum and a lack of vehicles that still run, garbage stood
uncollected for long periods of time, leading to rapid growth in the rat population. Rats had infested many areas of students' living quarters. As a result of the continuing deterioration of Cuba's infrastructure, running water was no longer available on the upper floors of many student dormitories. Often, my students came to class having had only a cracker and sugar water for breakfast. Basic health-care items, such as aspirin and antibiotics, are almost non-existent. Bars of soap, toothpaste, and toothbrushes are difficult for students to obtain. Yet in their tropical climate, Cubans would rather go to bed hungry than unwashed. Despite the subsistence resources and the crumbling infrastructure throughout the island of 11 million people, the professors, administrators, and students I encountered remain determined not to let higher education wither away. My students were bright and articulate. Their intense desire to learn United States history surprised and touched me. They were full of questions about the American Revolution, our Civil War, the civil-rights movement, the Vietnam War, and politics during the ReaganBush era. During one class discussion, a student asked, "Professor, why do your government and politicians like Senator Helms hate Cuba and want to cause us harm?" Why, indeed? With the collapse of the Soviet Union and its Eastern-bloc allies, why do we persist with this archaic embargo, which originally was supposed to help bring about an end to the Marxist regime of Fidel Castro' Cuba's 37-year-old Marxist government has not collapsed under our embargo, even though the Soviet Union's disintegration ended millions of dollars of annual aid to the island. Tourism is growing in Cuba, helping its economy. Hotels are being constructed with investments from Spain, and thousands of Canadian, Spanish, Italian, and Mexican tourists are visiting the island. Canadian businesses did more than $400-million in business with Cuba last year. Indeed, Canada is Cuba's third-largest investor, behind Spain and Mexico. All of this is happening despite our embargo, which stipulates that foreign vessels that unload goods in Cuban ports cannot dock in U.S. ports for six months thereafter. Despite the investments from other countries, our embargo, tightened in 1992, has exacerbated Cuba's current economic problems, directly affecting the health of the population. As Cesar Chelala, a member of the U.S.-based National Advisory Board of Physicians for Human Rights, wrote in the February 21 issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association, indicators of the health of the population have declined in recent years: "According to the Cuban Ministry of Public Health, the percentage of Cuban women with inadequate weight at pregnancy rose from 8.7 per cent in 1990 to 10.4 per cent in 1994, while the proportion of low-weight newborns rose from 7.8 per cent in 1991 to 8.9 per cent in 1994. In addition, maternal mortality rates increased from 1993 to 1994. Mortality from diarrheal disease in children, which had progressively decreased through 1989, rose again from 1989 to 1993, as did mortality due to infectious and parasitic diseases." These days, our

embargo has nothing to do with political freedom or democracy in Cuba, or with standing tall against Communism. The real issue is the resilience of Fidel Castro and his government, constant reminders of our failed foreign policy toward Cuba. Castro has outlasted eight U.S. presidents, each of whom predicted-and enacted measures to insure its downfall. We simply
can't handle having a socialist government 90 miles off our coast

FDI Internal
Lifting the embargo spurs foreign investment
Martin 10 international secretary of Hands Off Venezuela (Jorge Martin, 17 September 2010 Where is Cuba going? Towards Capitalism or
Socialism? http://www.marxist.com/where-is-cuba-going-capitalism-or-socialism.htm) //KY

Cuba is now heavily dependent on the export of professional services (mainly doctors to Venezuela) for its income in
hard currency which then allows it to purchase goods on the world market. This export of medical services is worth US$6,000 million a year, three times the income generated by tourism. The combination of all these factors led

to a record trade deficit of US$11,700 million in 2008 (up 70% from 2007) and a current account balance of payments deficit of over US$1,500 million in the same year (in comparison with a US$500 million surplus in 2007). Cuba is not a member of any international financial institution and in the context of the worldwide credit crunch and the US blockade it proved impossible to obtain any additional lines of credit. This led Cuba to default on its payments to foreign creditors by mid 2008 (Cubas foreign debt was
US$17,820 million in 2007, or around 45% of GDP).

Embargo Hurts Cuban Economy

The embargo has hurt the Cuban economy while strengthening the Castro regime
Llamas, 11 member of the department of political science at McGill University (Felipe Garcia-Andrade Llamas, April 2011, Patchy Policies:
The Cuban Embargo and the Gaza Blockade, McGill International Review, http://www.irsam.ca/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/FelipeGarciaAndradeLlamas.pdf) KD First, the

blockade and embargo have failed due to the internal delegitimization campaigns promoted by the target regimes against the sanctions. These campaigns insist that the countrys economic woes are a result of the sanctions. This victimized rhetoric on the countrys economic problems and the inability to deliver the population has resulted in increased political support for the regimes rather than turning the populations against the incumbent regimes as sanctioning states had intended. In Cuba, according to Cuban Foreign Affairs minister Bruno Rodriguez the direct economic damage inflicted on the Cuban people by the implementation of the blockade over the last 50 years amounts to more than $751 billion dollars.6 This economic damage has been caused by the loss of earnings due to the obstacles to the development of services and exports, restrictions on Cuban purchases in the United States, the limitation imposed on the growth of the national production of goods and services (limited access to technologies), denial of Cubas access to international credit and to integration in international financial regulations, exclusion of third-nation ships from U.S. ports, and the U.S. travel ban.7 Moreover, although the Cuban regime has been credited with having been able to establish a nation-wide free healthcare service, there are medical shortages which Cuban authorities blame on the embargo by using propaganda billboards in highly congested areas stating: 12 hours of blockade are equivalent to all the necessary insulin for the countrys sixty-four thousand patients.8 Also, a brain drain has been emphasized by the Cuban leadership due in part to the Cuban Adjustment Act (CAA) of 1996 first implemented in
1966 which is a special procedure under which Cuban natives or citizensget a green card permanent residence if they have been present in the United States for at least 1 year, they have been admitted or paroled and they are admissible as immigrants.9 The CA A, essentially

known as the wet foot, dry foot policy allows Cubans reaching U.S. soil, but not water to obtain the treasured green card. This policy has had a double effect. First and foremost, it has encouraged Cubans to migrate, mainly illegally, by speed- and homemade boats allowing many Cubans to prosper in the U.S., but has also resulted in thousands dying in the strait of Florida. Secondly, it has given Fidel Castro another pretext to attack the embargo by attributing blame on the death and flight of Cubans: The government of the United States should repeal the murderous
Cuban Adjustment Act, which has cost the lives of so many women, children, old people and other citizens of Cuba, and continues to do so.10 The Castro regime, in a biased fashion and through state-run media, exploits the humane and economic losses that the migration causes as a result of the CAA in turn gaining sympathy and undermining the embargo. Moreover, although

the state provides each Cuban with a monthly food staple at an artificially low price, food is expensive due to a shortage in supply. Jorge Dominguez cogently articulates the ineffectiveness of the embargo and its effect on food: These negative consequences
affecting the Cuban people have allowed the brilliant orator of Fidel Castro, for over 50 years in Cubas state-run media, to blame the U.S. for the economic woes: I want to remind you of a basic ethical principal related to Cuba: any injustice, any crime in whatever time has no excuse to go on. The cruel blockade (embargo) against the Cuban people costs lives, costs suffering.12 Thus the

Cuban population has been the primary victim while the regime has benefitted politically by using the embargo as a holistic justification for the countrys woes. A report to the Committee on Foreign Relations of the U.S. Senate explicitly described the futile outcome of the embargo: According to several analysts, the complete ban on U.S. trade and financial transactions with Cuba from the 1960s to the present allowed the Castro government to use the external threat posed by the United States to win additional popular support. In addition, as a visible symbol
of U.S. hostility, the sanctions made it possible for Castro to justify building a large military and establishing tight political controls on Cuban society.13

The embargo halts economic growth for both countriesrepealing it revitalizes our economies
Reuters 12 International news agency headquartered in London, United Kingdom (Cuba says ending U.S. embargo would help both
countries, Reuters, 9/20/12, http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/09/20/us-cuba-usa-embargo-idUSBRE88J15G20120920)//Bwang

The embargo, fully in place since 1962, has done $108 billion in damage to the Cuba economy, but also has violated the constitutional rights of Americans and made a market of 11 million people off limits to U.S. companies, Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez told reporters. "The blockade is, without doubt, the principal cause of the economic problems of our country and the essential obstacle for (our) development," he said, using
Cuba's term for the embargo. "The blockade provokes suffering, shortages, difficulties that reach each Cuban family, each Cuban child," Rodriguez said. He spoke at a press conference that Cuba stages each year ahead of what has become an annual vote in the United Nations on a resolution condemning the embargo. The vote is expected to take place next month. Last year, 186 countries voted for the resolution, while only the United States and Israel supported the embargo, Rodriguez said. Lifting the embargo would improve the image of the United States around the world, he said, adding that it would also end what he called a "massive, flagrant and systematic violation of human rights." That violation includes restrictions on U.S. travel to the island that require most Americans to get U.S. government permission to visit and a ban on most U.S. companies doing business in Cuba, he said. "The prohibition of travel for Americans is an atrocity from the constitutional point of view," Rodriguez said. Cuba has its own limits on travel that make it difficult for most of its citizens to leave the country for any destination. Rodriguez said the

elimination of the embargo would provide a much-needed tonic for the sluggish U.S. economy. "In a moment of economic crisis, lifting the blockade would contribute to the United States a totally new market of 11 million people. It would generate employment and end the situation in which American companies cannot compete in Cuba," he said.

The embargo fails as an economic tool but perpetuates the Cuban regime
Friedman 9 (George, American political scientist and author, founder, chief intelligence officer, financial overseer, and CEO of the private
intelligence corporation STRATFOR, Beneath the U.S. Obsession with Cuba, 4/13/09, http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20090413_beneath_u_s_obsession_cuba, MDM)

The Cuban American National Foundation (CANF), a group vehemently opposed to the Cuban government, came out in favor of easing the U.S. isolation of Cuba last week. The move opens the possibility that the United States might shift its policies toward Cuba. Florida is a key state for anyone who wants to become president of the United States, and the Cuban community in Florida is substantial. Though the Soviet threat expired long ago, easing the embargo on Cuba has always held limited value to American politicians with ambitions. For them, Florida is more important than Cuba. Therefore, this historic shift alters the U.S. domestic political landscape. In many ways, the U.S. policy of isolating Cuba has been more important to the Cubans than to the United States, particularly since the fall of the Soviet Union. The Cuban economy is in abysmal shape. But the U.S. embargo has been completely ineffective on the stated goal of destabilizing the Cuban government, which has used the embargo as justification for economic hardship. Although the embargo isolates Cuba from its natural market, the United States, the embargo is not honored by Canada, Mexico, Europe, China or anyone else beyond the United States. That means Cuban goods can be sold on the world market, Cuba can import anything it can pay for, and Cuba can get investment of any size from any country wishing to invest on the island. Because it has almost complete access to the global market, Cuba's economic problem is not the U.S. embargo. But the embargo does create a political defense for Cuban dysfunction. It is easy to dismiss the embargo issue as primarily a
matter of domestic politics for both nations. It is also possible to argue that, though Cuba was once significant to the United States, that significance has declined since the end of the Cold War. Both assertions are valid, but neither is sufficient. Beyond the apparently disproportionate U.S. obsession with Cuba, and beyond a Cuban government whose ideology pivots around anti-Americanism, there are

deeper and more significant geopolitical factors to consider.

AT: Trade With Other Countries Solves

Trade with other countries is no relief the US exerts enormous political pressure on foreign nations and companies
Coll, 8 Professor of Law, President of the International Human Rights Law Institute, and Director, European and Latin American Legal
Studies Program at DePaul College of Law, Juris Doctor and Ph.D. in government and foreign affairs from the University of Virginia, frequent lecturer on American foreign policy, U.S. relations with Cuba and Latin America, and international legal and political issues (Alberto R., Harming Human Rights in the Name of Promoting Them: The Case of the Cuban Embargo, UCLA Journal of International Law and Foreign Affairs, Fall 2007, lexis)//BI

Apologists for the embargo point out that the embargo has only a limited impact on the Cuban economy because Cuba is free to trade with virtually every other country in the world.260 This argument overlooks two key issues. First, the U.S. government has not contented itself with denying the benefits of trade and investment to Cuba. Instead, throughout most of the embargo's history, U.S. administrations have exerted enormous pressures on foreign governments and companies to discourage all economic contact with Cuba. A typical example occurred in the early 1990s when Cuba, then in the
midst of a severe economic depression caused by the collapse of its ally, the Soviet Union, attempted to modernize its antiquated 40-year old telephone network. Grupos Domo, a Mexican-based conglomerate with substantial economic ties to the United States, began negotiations with Cuba over what would have been a multi-billion dollar deal but eventually withdrew from negotiations as a result of enormous pressure by the U.S. government.261 Ultimately, Cuba found a group of willing international investor partners, most of whom insisted on anonymity in order to avoid possible American retaliation. Thus, the

reach of the U.S. embargo extends significantly beyond U.S.- Cuba trade relations, and negatively impacts Cuba's relations with other countries as well. Second, since Congress passed the Cuban Democracy Act in 1992 and the subsequent Helms-Burton Act of 1996, the embargo has sharply increased its extraterritorial reach. Thousands of foreign companies that could trade with Cuba before 1992 are no longer allowed to do so
by virtue of being subsidiaries of U.S. corporations. Although the European Union and other U.S. allies responded to the Helms-Burton Act by enacting "blocking statutes" and "claw-back" provisions262, Helms-Burton has nonetheless had a chilling effect on trade and investment with Cuba.263 Thus, the embargo's economic

impact must be measured not only in terms of the way it has isolated Cuba from U.S. markets but also by its effect on the willingness of many private international entities to do business with Cuba. Because the embargo has such far-reaching effects on foreign trade and investment with Cuba, its effects on human rights are similarly far-reaching, encompassing such areas as public health, nutrition, education, culture, and even fundamental family rights. In general, economic sanctions affect education in the sanctioned country by decreasing
access to supplies, which ultimately leads to the deterioration of infrastructure. 264 The Cuban government estimates that the embargo has cost Cuba an estimated average of $2.19 billion a year since 1959, a figure that may be quite conservative in light of several factors. 265 First, the embargo is unusually comprehensive and affects every area of Cuba's economic life. Second, it deprives Cuba of the benefits from economies of scale and geographical advantages associated with the U.S. market. Third, the dollar's role as the international currency of choice, the preeminent role of U.S. banks in international trade especially in the western hemisphere, and the embargo's extraterritorial reach combine to increase substantially the costs to Cuba of trading with many other countries.

Democracy

Democracy 1AC
Now is key to a Cuban democratic transition
White 13 (Robert, Op-ed contributor to the New York Times, After Chvez, a Chance to Rethink Relations with Cuba, 3/7/13,
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/08/opinion/after-chavez-hope-for-good-neighbors-in-latin-america.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0, MDM)

FOR most of our history, the United States assumed that its security was inextricably linked to a partnership with Latin America. This legacy dates from the Monroe Doctrine, articulated in 1823, through the Rio pact, the postwar treaty that pledged the United States to come to the defense of its allies in Central and South America. Yet for a half-century, our policies toward our southern neighbors have alternated between intervention and neglect, inappropriate meddling and missed opportunities. The death this week of President Hugo Chvez of Venezuela who along with Fidel
Castro of Cuba was perhaps the most vociferous critic of the United States among the political leaders of the Western Hemisphere in recent decades offers an

opportunity to restore bonds with potential allies who share the American goal of prosperity. Throughout his career, the autocratic Mr. Chvez used our embargo as a wedge with which to antagonize the United States and alienate its supporters. His fuel helped prop up the rule of Mr. Castro and his brother Ral, Cubas current president. The embargo no longer serves any useful purpose (if it ever
did at all); President Obama should end it, though it would mean overcoming powerful opposition from Cuban-American lawmakers in Congress. An

end to the Cuba embargo would send a powerful signal to all of Latin America that the United States wants a new, warmer relationship with democratic forces seeking social change throughout the Americas. I joined the State Department as a Foreign Service officer in the 1950s and chose to serve in Latin America
in the 1960s. I was inspired by President John F. Kennedys creative response to the revolutionary fervor then sweeping Latin America. The 1959 Cuban revolution, led by the charismatic Fidel Castro, had inspired revolts against the cruel dictatorships and corrupt pseudodemocracies that had dominated the region since the end of Spanish and Portuguese rule in the 19th century. Kennedy had a charisma of his own, and it captured the imaginations of leaders who wanted democratic change, not violent revolution. Kennedy reacted to the threat of continental insurrection by creating the Alliance for Progress, a kind of Marshall Plan for the hemisphere that was calculated to achieve the same kind of results that saved Western Europe from Communism. He pledged billions of dollars to this effort. In hindsight, it may have been overly ambitious, even nave, but Kennedys focus on Latin America rekindled the promise of the Good Neighbor Policy of Franklin D. Roosevelt and transformed the whole concept of inter-American relations. Tragically, after Kennedys assassination in 1963, the ideal of the Alliance for Progress crumbled and la noche mas larga the longest night began for the proponents of Latin American democracy. Military regimes flourished, democratic governments withered, moderate political and civil leaders were labeled Communists, rights of free speech and assembly were curtailed and human dignity crushed, largely because the United States abandoned all standards save that of anti-Communism. During my Foreign Service career, I did what I could to oppose policies that supported dictators and closed off democratic alternatives. In 1981, as the ambassador to El Salvador, I refused a demand by the secretary of state, Alexander M. Haig Jr., that I use official channels to cover up the Salvadoran militarys responsibility for the murders of four American churchwomen. I was fired and forced out of the Foreign Service. The Reagan administration, under the illusion that Cuba was the power driving the Salvadoran revolution, turned its policy over to the Pentagon and C.I.A., with predictable results. During the 1980s the United States helped expand the Salvadoran military, which was dominated by uniformed assassins. We armed them, trained them and covered up their crimes. After our counterrevolutionary efforts failed to end the Salvadoran conflict, the Defense Department asked its research institute, the RAND Corporation, what had gone wrong. RAND analysts found that United States policy makers had refused to accept the obvious truth that the insurgents were rebelling against social injustice and state terror. As a result, we pursued a policy unsettling to ourselves, for ends humiliating to the Salvadorans and at a cost disproportionate to any conventional conception of the national interest. Over the subsequent quarter-century, a

series of profound political, social and economic changes have undermined the traditional power bases in Latin America and, with them,
longstanding regional institutions like the Organization of American States. The organization, which is headquartered in Washington and which excluded Cuba in 1962, was seen as irrelevant by Mr. Chvez. He promoted the creation of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States which excludes the United States and Canada as an alternative. At a regional meeting that included Cuba and excluded the United States, Mr. Chvez said that the most positive thing for the independence of our continent is that we meet alone without the hegemony of empire. Mr. Chvez

was masterful at manipulating Americas antagonism toward Fidel Castro as a rhetorical stick with which to attack the United States as an imperialist aggressor, an enemy of progressive change, interested mainly in treating Latin America as a vassal continent, a source of cheap commodities and labor. Like its predecessors, the Obama administration has given few signs that it has grasped the magnitude of
these changes or cares about their consequences. After President Obama took office in 2009, Latin Americas leading statesman at the time, Luiz Incio Lula da Silva, then the president of Brazil, urged Mr. Obama to normalize relations with Cuba. Lula, as he is universally known, correctly identified our Cuba policy as the chief stumbling block to renewed ties with Latin America, as it had been since the very early years of the Castro regime. After the failure of the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, Washington set out to accomplish by stealth and economic strangulation what it had failed to do by frontal attack. But the clumsy mix of covert action and porous boycott succeeded primarily in bringing shame on the

United States and turning Mr. Castro into a folk hero. And even now, despite the relaxing of travel restrictions and Ral Castros announcement that he will retire in 2018, the implacable hatred of many within the Cuban exile community continues. The fact that two of the three Cuban-American members of the Senate Marco Rubio of Florida and Ted Cruz of Texas are rising stars in the Republican Party complicates further the potential for a recalibration of Cuban-American relations. (The third member, Senator Robert Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, is the new chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, but his power has been weakened by a continuing ethics controversy.) Are there any other examples in the history of diplomacy where the leaders of a small, weak nation can prevent a great power from acting in its own best interest merely by staying alive? The

re-election of President Obama, and the death of Mr. Chvez, give America a chance to reassess the irrational hold on our imaginations that Fidel Castro has exerted for five decades. The president and his new secretary of state, John Kerry, should quietly reach out to Latin American leaders like President Juan Manuel Santos of Colombia and Jos Miguel Insulza, secretary general of the Organization of American States. The message should be simple: The president is prepared to show some flexibility on Cuba and asks your help. Such a simple request could transform the Cuban issue from a bilateral problem into a multilateral challenge. It would then be up to Latin Americans to devise a policy that would help Cuba achieve a sufficient measure of democratic change to justify its reintegration into a hemisphere composed entirely of elected governments. If, however, our present policy paralysis continues, we will soon see the emergence of two rival camps, the United States versus Latin America. While Washington would continue to enjoy friendly relations with individual countries like Brazil, Mexico and Colombia, the vision of Roosevelt and Kennedy of a hemisphere of partners cooperating in matters of common concern would be reduced to a historical footnote.

The embargo has empirically failed to solve structural democracy problems in Cuba
Kentwired 12 (Kentwired, Kent State University peer-reviewed journal, Guest column: Cuban Embargo has been 50 years of failure,
3/12/12, http://kentwired.com/guest-column-cuban-embargo-has-been-50-years-of-failure, MDM) February 2012 marked the 50th Anniversary of the US trade embargo against Cuba. President Kennedy put the embargo in place as punishment to Fidel Castros regime, and the U.S.

hoped the embargo would force Castro into accepting democratic reforms and allowing more political and economic freedom for the Cuban people. However, 50 years later, the Cuban embargo has only succeeded in decreasing the quality of life for Cubans, pushing the Cuban government towards leftist allies in South America and has given the Cuban government a scapegoat for their economic and political mismanagement. Furthermore, the US maintains the Cuban embargo despite many other countries having equally poor human rights records. An Angus Reid Public Opinion poll
conducted in February 2012 showed that 62 percent of Americans supported re-establishing diplomatic relations with Cuba, with only 23 percent disagreeing. Additionally, 51 percent supported ending the trade embargo. The current embargo includes several stringent requirements. For example, vessels which dock in Cuban ports are prohibited from entering the US for 180 days, no article produced with more than 10 percent Cuban components can enter the US, and companies that do business in Cuba are often denied US visas, according to Reuters. No other country in the world embargoes Cuba like the US does. In fact, every year for the past 20 years a United Nations resolution has been passed condemning Americas embargo against Cuba. In 2010, 186 countries signed the embargo condemning the US and only the US and Israel voted against it, according to the Associated Press. The first way the Cuban embargo is counter-productive is that the

embargo does not affect its intended target: the Cuban government. Although the embargo harms the Cuban governments access to credit and foreign investment, the Cuban people feel the day-to-day effects of the embargo, but the embargo actually has the opposite effect in terms of undermining the Castro regime. The Castro regime is able to use the embargo as an excuse for their failed economic and political policies. Instead of being held responsible for their economic shortcomings, the Cuban regime is able to blame them on the United States. Ending the embargo would end the excuses and force the Cuban government to be responsible. The second way the embargo is counter-productive is that it pushes Cuba towards leftist governments in Latin America. Due to economic necessity, Cuba has close relationships with the Chavez regime in Venezuela and Evo Morales in Bolivia. If America were to allow economic relations, Cuba would not rely on other un-democratic regimes for support. The
third way the embargo has failed is that the reasoning behind the establishment of the embargo is inconsistent and outdated. The Freedom House 2012 Report, which ranks countries on their levels of political and civil rights, rated Cuba Not Free and placed it in the same category as China, Laos, Vietnam and Saudi Arabia among others. China and Saudi Arabia actually had identical scores to Cuba. Interestingly though, the US does not have economic embargoes against either of these countries, according to the US Treasury. In fact, according to the 2010 US Census, China is Americas No. 2 trade partner and Saudi Arabia is Americas No. 10 trading partner. So if the embargo is truly being maintained because of moral obligations to freedom or democracy, then we are being very selective about who these morals apply to. President Obama deserves recognition for lifting bans on Cuban Americans ability to travel to Cuba and for sending remittances to families in Cuba, according to the Associated Press. These are moves in the right direction. America

should continue to slowly scale back the embargo and eventually end it completely. It is also vital for the US to reestablish diplomatic ties with Cuba. I am

confident once the US embargo ends and diplomatic ties are reestablished, Americas economic and diplomatic influence will help move Cuba towards democratic reform. One thing America has historically failed at is acknowledging its mistakes in foreign relations. The Cuban embargo, a holdover from the Cold War era, is a prime example of outdated and ineffective policy and should be ended.

Lifting the embargo key to democratizationexisting reforms prove that they are open to transition.
Lopez-Levy, 13 http://www.fpif.org/articles/a_post-castro_era_looms_for_cuba A Post-Castro Era Looms for Cuba By Arturo Lopez-Levy,
April 17, 2013 Arturo Lopez-Levy is a PhD Candidate at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies of the University of Denver.//JH

In the last five years, the Cuban government has created an important institutional foundation for the transition to a mixed economy, symbolized by the encouragement of non-state sector firms, and a posttotalitarian relationship between the state and civil society, symbolized by relaxed travel restrictions. With the election of the new Council of State on February 24th, the last phase of the transition to the postCastro era began. Ral Castro was reelected president, but for the first time a leader born after 1959, Miguel Diaz-Canel, became the
second in command. Although this transition is unfolding with the same party and president in power, and is both gradual and limited, a new leadership and changing priorities are discernible. If we think of the Communist Party as a corporation (an analogy that should not be abused), Diaz-Canel is a manager who, over time, has served at various levels of its production chain. He worked at its foundation, as a university teacher and youth leader. Later, in the strategic provinces of Villa Clara and Holguin, he administered the implementation of economic reforms and directed the opening of the economy to foreign investment and tourism, all the while maintaining party control over both processes. Daz-Canel is part of the network of provincial party czars who are very important in the implementation of the proposed changes, particularly decentralization. Having worked in central and eastern Cuba, the new first vice president has cordial ties with regional commanders of the armed forces, which, along with the Communist Party, is the other pillar of the current Cuban system. He is a civilian, the first in the line of succession to have little military experience. But he is steeped in the networks of power and well versed in the controlled management of reforms. Challenges for Cuban and United States leaders If

Cuba implements the type of mixed economy proposed by the last Congress of the Communist Party and establishes a new, more vital relationship with its diaspora and the world, it will also transform politically. With the economy and society changing, the political environment cannot remain intact. The rise of market mechanisms and an autonomous nonstate sector will reinforce the new pluralizing flows of information, investment, and technology. The new
social sectors will seek representation in the political arena. Citizens will have greater access to the Internet, from which civil society will benefit. This does not imply a transition to multiparty democracy over the next five years. But even

without regime change, economic liberalization will force an expansion of pluralism within the current Peoples Power system. Candidates for
local elections could come from the new non-state sectors, or previously unrepresented religious or social groups, and demand a transparent use of local taxes. Pressures for systemic political changes could increase as the economy adopts more market-oriented structures and more Cubans are able to travel abroad. Then the party system could be reformed in order to remain at the helm of social and economic changes. Political liberalization will probably start at the lower levels of government, allowing citizens to vent their frustrations at that scale. However, the pressure is sure to rise. Raul Castros decision to limit political office holders to two five-year terms, at a time when the older generation is leaving power by attrition, will result in a less personalized and more institutionalized leadership that promotes upward mobility of new politicians in an orderly fashion. The central challenge facing Cuban leaders is to have the audacity, creativity, and self-confidence to accelerate economic reforms, without losing control of the ongoing political liberalization. In

this new context, the U.S challenge is to open a path for those in the regime who have an interest in backing more serious reforms. The United States should discredit the naysayers within the Cuban elite (and Washington's as well) by showing what Cuba can gain through opening up its politics and society, rather than maintaining excessive controls. This requires a U.S. readiness to present Havana with real incentives in ways the United States has not done since the times of the Ford and Carter administrations.
Washington's current strategyignoring Raul Castro's pro-market moves and using USAID programs to meddle in Cuba's domestic politics and promote regime changeis yielding diminishing returns. The

United States has more to gain by allowing its own business community to trade and invest in the emerging Cuban non-state sector and engaging the new leaders in Havana. A dynamic Cuban market that appeals to U.S. investors would put the U.S. embargo against the island in jeopardy.

Economic openness is the best way to encourage democracyempirics prove

Feinberg, 11 http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2011/11/18-cuba-feinberg November 2011 Reaching Out: Cubas New Economy
and the International Response By: Richard Feinberg Richard Feinberg is professor of international political economy at the Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies, University of California, San Diego. Feinberg served as special assistant to President Clinton and

senior director of the National Security Councils Office of Inter-American Affairs. He has held positions on the State Department's policy planning staff and worked as an international economist in the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of International Affairs.//JH This paper flows from the traditional notion that it is in the interests of the United States, and the international development community within which the U.S. has long played a leadership role, to promote progressive economic reforms, however gradual and partial, in countries opening

While there is no automatic, linear relationship between market-oriented economic reform and political liberalization, political theory and recent history suggest that one trend tends to reinforce the other, especially in the Western Hemisphere and in the long run. Moreover, in the absence of direct leverage over a nations political institutions, promoting economic reform may be the most realistic option for advancing political pluralism. In Cuba today, the opportunity is in economic policy, legitimized by the regime and openly and widely debated by the Cuban public; whereas the governments powerful security apparatus maintains its tight control over political activity and insists on the hegemony of the Cuban Communist Party.
to international trade and investment and seeking to enhance market mechanisms and empower a domestic private sector.

Cuba is key to broader Latin American democracy promotion Santons, 8 chairman of the Cuban American National Foundation (Jorge Mas, How to Win the Cuban American Vote, Washington
Post, 25 October 2008, http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2008-10-25/opinions/36910345_1_cuban-dissidents-travel-and-remittancescuban-americans)//BI

U.S. policy toward Cuba is at best static and at worst counterproductive, a source of increasing frustration to many Cuban
Americans. This sad status quo contributes to the challenge that Cuban Americans will face on Election Day as, once again, particularly in Florida, our vote will probably help determine the next occupant of the White House. The

overwhelming majority of Cuban Americans expect the next president to abandon today's failed "wait and hope" policy and adopt a policy of support and engagement directed toward opening new avenues of freedom for the Cuban people as well as
enhancing stability in the United States. The Cuban American National Foundation, the nation's largest Cuban exile organization, has a predominantly Republican membership. Yet our fundamental interest is not partisan politics but helping to restore freedom to our brothers and sisters on the island. We entered the new millennium expecting U.S. policy toward Cuba to follow the effective model of the West's support for Poland's Solidarity movement and civil society across Eastern Europe. It was our hope that by independent civil

seeking to empower Cuba's

society through unlimited support for the brave men and women on the island opposing the Castro regime, the energy and resources of the Cuban American community would be unleashed. To this end, we have been sorely
disappointed. As a direct result of President Bush's strategic blunder in 2004 restricting contact with the island, Cuban dissidents have experienced a significant reduction in material and humanitarian assistance. They are also subject to a ban on receiving cash remittances that help them and their families survive. The isolation of these and other Cubans has increased while Fidel Castro's departure from office caught the Bush administration off guard. Together, these developments have helped Ral Castro consolidate control over the Cuban people. These

failures in U.S. policy undermine important American interests. Just as a democratic Israel is a key U.S. friend in a critical region, a democratic Cuba would be a crucial ally in furthering democracy in Latin America . Cuba is important, also, because the dissatisfaction of its people under the Castro regime is bound to have a significant effect on
Floridians and Cuban Americans nationwide. It has in the past.

Extinction Diamond 95
Larry, Senior Fellow Hoover Institution, Promoting Democracy in the 1990s, December, http://wwics.si.edu/subsites/ccpdc/pubs/di/1.htm
OTHER THREATS This hardly exhausts the lists of threats to our security and well-being in the coming years and decades. In the former Yugoslavia nationalist aggression tears at the stability of Europe and could easily spread. The flow of illegal drugs intensifies through increasingly powerful international crime syndicates that have made common cause with authoritarian regimes and have utterly corrupted the institutions of tenuous, democratic ones. Nuclear, chemical, and biological

weapons continue to proliferate. The very source of life on Earth, the global ecosystem, appears increasingly endangered. Most of these new and unconventional threats to security are associated with or aggravated by the weakness or absence of democracy, with its provisions for legality, accountability, popular sovereignty, and openness. LESSONS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY The experience of this century offers important lessons. Countries that govern themselves in a truly democratic fashion do not go to war with one another. They do not aggress against their neighbors to aggrandize themselves or glorify their leaders. Democratic governments do not ethnically "cleanse" their own populations, and they

are much less likely to face ethnic insurgency. Democracies do not sponsor terrorism against one another. They

do not build w eapons of m ass d estruction to use on or to threaten one another. Democratic countries form more reliable, open, and enduring trading partnerships. In the long run they offer better and more stable climates for investment. They are more environmentally responsible because they must answer to their own citizens, who organize to protest the destruction of their environments. They are
better bets to honor international treaties since they value legal obligations and because their openness makes it much more difficult to breach agreements in secret. Precisely because, within their own borders, they respect competition, civil liberties, property rights, and the rule of law, democracies are the only reliable foundation on which a new world

order of international security and prosperity can be built.

Now K/ Transition
The Cuban government is in a transitional period now Lifting the helms-burton act is a necessary step to ensure the right transition
George 13 Project Manager with the Bertelsmann Foundation (European think tank) (Samuel George, Cuba in Transition, United States
Stuck in Yesterday, March 3, 2013, http://semancha.com/2013/03/03/cuba-in-transition-united-states-stuck-in-yesterday/, JL) The United States embargo

against Cuba is like the war on drugs everyone in Washington realizes the policy is shortsighted and ineffective, yet nobody steps forward to change it. The Soviets appear increasingly unlikely to use
Cuba as a conduit to spread international communism throughout the Americas. Anyone worth their salt on the Hill, from the State Department, or the Treasury will privately admit as much. Yet the policy remains firmly entrenched. The same Hill staffer that admits the anachronistic fallacy underlying the Cold War campaign will simply shrug it off as an inevitable fact of life: death, taxes, and the embargo on Cuba. The US stubbornly sticks to a bad policy because it is good politics. Yes, the War on Drugs is counterproductive, but as long as tough-on-drugs continues to poll well, the electoral reward for reform seems scant. Similarly, anything but the hardest line on Cuba could cost either party Florida and, in turn, a national election. This is unfortunate. Winds

of change are stirring in Cuba, yet the USs stubbornness, embodied in the 1996 Helms-Burton act, could lead Uncle Sam to blow the opportunity. Here Comes the Sun On Sunday, February 24, President of the Council of State of Cuba and de facto head of state Ral Castro announced that he would surrender power in 2018. He also appointed 52-year old Miguel Diaz-Canel as first vice president, implying that a man who had yet to be born when Fidel Castro took Havana would be Cubas next leader. The exit of Ral, the emergence of a younger, less ideological generation of leaders, and the incessant, if slow transition to a market economy combine to create an opportunity for the US to normalize relations with the Caribbean island. In fact, such normalization would reinforce all three trends. Little is immediately clear about Vice President Diaz-Canel. We
understand that he was a heartthrob in the 1980s, that he rides his bike to work, and that he listens to The Beatles. We know Ral Castro has praised his ideological firmness and that he has served in the Cuban military two facts that have raised red flags for hardliners in Miami. Diaz-Canel: Party hack? Agent of Change? The US can help decide. Yet compelling indicators suggest party hack, and that he will continue

that Diaz-Canel is more than a Rals progress towards economic liberalization. Diaz-Canel has distinguished himself for his pragmatism. He is believed to have played a key role in facilitating foreign investment in Cuban hotels. As Minister of Higher Education, he gained the respect of his peers by listening and probing, rather than dictating. The ascension of Diaz-Canel represents a break from the geriatric revolutionary leaders a break that was likely a precondition for any serious modernization. Moreover, Diaz-Canel would struggle to hold a hard line even if he wanted to. Rals reforms have been slow and halting, but they have also been irreversible. The Economist reports that much of Cuban farming has been privatized and that, by 2015, one-third of the workforce will be in the private sector. With cars, computers and phones already traded, the momentum of
commercialization the allure of possession will be difficult to stymie. The Castros success in containing reform momentum owes much to personal allegiance and veneration. Diaz-Canel will command no such respect. Toe Jam Policy Castros exit opens

a window of opportunity for the United States. But US obstinacy, embodied by the Helms-Burton Act, threatens to pull the curtains on this window. The Helms-Burton Act, passed by the US congress in 1996, requires a series of stringent reforms (including
the abolishment of the Cuban Ministry of the Interior, the issuance of private media permits and a new, democratically elected government within 18 months) that must be addressed before the embargo can be lifted. Such reforms have not been required of other American partners, including China, Saudi Arabia, and Vietnam. The Helms-Burton Act can already be implicated in one missed opportunity. The fall

of the Soviet Union in 1991 pulled the rug out from under the Cuban economy, and Fidel Castro was forced to slowly implement market-based reform. Rather than encouraging these reforms, the US congress enacted a series of draconian laws, culminating in the Helms-Burton act, all geared towards further isolating Castro and spiking the final nail into the regimes coffin. Instead of facilitating Cuban reform, the US left Castro exposed only until a new sugar daddy emerged in the form of Hugo Chvez in 1999. The standards of Helms-Burton remain unrealistic, and observing the act would force the US to impede and frustrate a transition that was always going to be difficult. Helms-Burton may have already cost Washington one opportunity will it stifle another? Help! In the near term, Cubas most important relation may not be with the United States, but with Venezuela. Venezuela provides the energy-starved island with over

100,000 discounted barrels of oil per day, saving Cuba US$3.5 billion annually (5.75 percent of 2008 GDP). This support has enabled

the Castros to prolong their regime for an additional fifteen years. With an economy under intensifying duress, Venezuela will be hard-pressed to continue such largess, which could well be curtailed by the time that DiazCanel assumes office. Without Venezuelan oil, the Cuban economy will face severe stress. The island will need help from somebody. The United States of America could take an enormous step towards facilitating Cubas liberalization and an enormous step towards normalizing a relationship that has poisoned the hemisphere for half of a century- by being that somebody. Yet, if Helms-Burton precludes the US from filling any void left by Venezuela, it is entirely possible that someone else will. China, for example, is intrigued by the potential of Cuban off-shore oil, and has been known to finance projects in the Caribbean of far less net-present-value. Beijing could easily intervene on Havanas behalf, and any financial support would not be contingent upon political reform . And a repressive regime could live on.

Trade K/ Democracy
Trade and democracy are empirically linked
Griswold 5 (Daniel, director of the Cato Institute's Center for Trade Policy Studies, Four Decades of Failure: The U.S. Embargo against Cuba, 10/12/02, http://www.cato.org/publications/speeches/fourdecades-failure-us-embargo-against-cuba, MDM)
Economic sanctions rarely work. Trade and investment sanctions against Burma, Iran, and North Korea have failed to change the behavior of any of those oppressive regimes; sanctions have only deepened the deprivation of the very people we are trying to help. Our research at the

Cato Institute confirms that trade and globalization till the soil for democracy. Nations open to trade are more likely to be democracies where human rights are respected. Trade and the development it creates give people tools of communication-cell phones, satellite TV, fax machines, the Internet-that tend to undermine oppressive authority. Trade not only increases the flow of goods and services but also of people and ideas. Development also creates a larger middle class that is usually the backbone of democracy. President Bush
seems to understand this powerful connection between trade and democracy when he talks about China or the Middle East. In a speech on trade early in his first term, the president noted that trade was about more than raising incomes. Trade

creates the habits of freedom, the president said, and those habits begin to create the expectations of democracy and demands for better democratic institutions. Societies that open to commerce across their borders are more open to democracy within their borders. And for those of us who care about values and believe in valuesnot just American values, but universal values that promote human dignitytrade is a good way to do that.

Lifting K/ Democracy
The Cuban embargo has failed, only its removal can restore democracy
Perez 10 (Louis, J. Carlyle Sitterson professor of history and the director of the Institute for the Study of the Americas at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Want change in Cuba? End U.S. embargo, 9/21/10, http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/09/20/perez.cuba.embargo/index.html, MDM) In April 2009, the White House released a presidential memorandum declaring that democracy and human rights in Cuba were "national interests of the United States." Assistant Secretary of State Arturo Valenzuela repeated the message in May of this year to the Cuban-American National Foundation in Miami. The Obama administration, he said, wanted "to promote respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms ... in ways that will empower the Cuban people and advance our national interests." Fine words. But if the administration really wanted to do something in the national interest, it would end the 50-year-old policy of political and economic isolation of Cuba. The Cuban embargo can no longer even pretend to be plausible. On the contrary, it has contributed to the very conditions that stifle democracy and human rights there. For 50 years, its brunt has fallen mainly on the Cuban people. This is not by accident. On the contrary, the embargo was designed to impose suffering and hunger on Cubans in the hope that they would rise up and overturn their government. "The
only foreseeable means of alienating internal support," the Department of State insisted as early as April 1960, "is through disenchantment and disaffection based on economic dissatisfaction and hardship." The United States tightened the screws in the post-Soviet years with the Torricelli Act and the Helms-Burton Act -- measures designed, Sen. Robert Torricelli said, "to wreak havoc on that island." The post-Soviet years were indeed calamitous. Throughout the 1990s, Cubans faced growing scarcities, deteriorating services and increased rationing. Meeting the needs of ordinary life took extraordinary effort. And therein lies the problem that still bedevils U.S. policy today. Far

from inspiring the Cuban people to revolution, the embargo keeps them down and distracted. Dire need and urgent want are hardly optimum circumstances for a people to contemplate the benefits of democracy. A people
preoccupied with survival have little interest or inclination to bestir themselves in behalf of anything else. In Cuba, routine household errands and chores consume overwhelming amounts of time and energy, day after day: hours in lines at the local grocery store or waiting for public transportation. Cubans in vast numbers choose to emigrate. Others burrow deeper into the black market, struggling to make do and carry on. Many commit suicide. (Cuba has one of the highest suicide rates in the world; in 2000, the latest year for which we have statistics, it was 16.4 per 100,000 people.) A June 2008 survey in The New York Times reported that less

than 10 percent of Cubans identified the lack of political freedom as the island's main problem. As one Cuban colleague recently suggested to me: "First necessities, later democracy." The United States should consider a change of policy, one that would offer Cubans relief from the all-consuming ordeal of daily life. Improved material circumstances would allow Cubans to turn their attention to other aspirations. Ending the embargo would also imply respect for the Cuban people, an acknowledgment that they have the vision and vitality to enact needed reforms, and that transition in Cuba, whatever form it may take, is wholly a Cuban affair. A good-faith effort to engage Cuba, moreover, would counter the common perception there that the United States is a threat to its sovereignty. It would deny Cuban leaders the chance to use U.S. policy as pretext to limit public debate and stifle dissent -- all to the good of democracy and human rights. And it would serve the national interest.

Removing the embargo creates more interaction between the US and Cuba necessary for democracy
Lloyd 10 (Delia, Senior Policy Manager at the BBC's international development charity, BBC Media Action and political correspondent for Politics Daily, Ten Reasons to Lift the Cuba Embargo, 8/24/10, http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/08/24/ten-reasons-to-lift-the-cuba-embargo/, MDM) It's good politics. Supporters of the trade embargo -- like Cuban-American Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) -- have long argued that easing the restrictions would only reward Castro for the regime's ongoing repression of political dissidents. We need to keep up the economic pressure on Cuba, so this logic goes, in order to keep pressure on the regime to do something

about human rights. But there's a long-standing empirical relationship between trade and democracy. The usual logic put forth to explain this relationship is that trade creates an economically independent and politically aware middle class, which, in turn, presses for political reform. It's not clear that this argument actually holds up when subjected to close causal scrutiny (although the reverse does seem to be true -- i.e., democratic reform creates pressure for trade liberalization). Still, it's difficult to disagree with the proposition that by enabling visiting scholars and religious groups to stay in Cuba for up to two years (as the presidential order would allow) rather than a matter of weeks (as is currently the case) we'd be helping, not hurting, democracy in Cuba. First, easing

the current travel restrictions would allow for far deeper linkages between non-governmental organizations from both countries, which some see as a powerful mechanism for democratic reform. Second, because American visitors would be staying on the island longer, scholars and activists alike would gain much better insight into where the pressure points for democracy actually exist.

Lifting the embargo key to democracy efforts and economic stability

Ediger 12 (Don, veteran journalist who has worked for The Miami Herald, Associated Press, BusinessWeek and the International Herald
Tribune, among other publications, Cubas Post-Castro Future, 9/19/12, http://consortiumnews.com/2012/09/19/cubas-post-castro-future/, MDM) Exclusive: With

Fidel Castro now 86 and his brother Raul at 81, big changes appear inevitable in Cuba over the next few years. Cuban-Americans are ramping up investment plans, assuming the U.S. government will finally lift the embargo. But the future may not be all thats expected, reports Don Ediger. For more than 50 years, Cuban-Americans have been looking for ways to end the Castro regime. Today their plans are being reshaped in ways that would have been all but unthinkable only a few years ago and these plans will be affected by the outcome of U.S. presidential elections. Most

Cuban-Americans now believe that a transition to democracy may require a period of many years. In the meantime, a growing number of them are exploring ways to profit from a country that has been off limits for most American companies. The key to this new strategy is an option that until recently wasnt even open to discussion ending the U.S. embargo. Thats more likely to happen, Cuba experts say, if Barack Obama is reelected, because Democrats are traditionally more open to options regarding the embargo. Theres also growing doubt about whether outlawing Cuban imports actually hurts the regime. Personally, I think that the embargo is a completely failed policy, says Miami attorney Antonio Zamora, referring to the 50-year-old law that was
imposed after the Castro regime expropriated private property. In all those years, Zamora points out, only a few property owners have ever been compensated. Though largely overlooked by the media, major shifts in Florida demographics make repeal of the embargo much more likely. Numbering more than one million, Cuban-Americans have been the largest Hispanic group in Florida, and for many years they overwhelmingly favored keeping the embargo in place. To win elections in Florida the countrys largest swing state politicians of both parties have traditionally promised to uphold the embargo for fear of alienating Cuban voters. Now thats changing. Hispanics from Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Mexico and other Latin American countries are growing faster in numbers than those from Cuba. And while Cuban-Americans are mostly Republicans, others in Florida are heavily Democratic. Moreover, Cuban-Americans themselves are changing their mind about the embargo. According to a recent study by the Cuban Research Institute at Florida International University (FIU), most Cuban-Americans in Miami would agree with Zamora that the embargo hasnt worked well. In fact, 47 percent would like to see the embargo lifted. This is probably the first presidential election in which Cuba is not a top issue for the CubanAmerican community, says Andy Gomez, senior fellow at the University of Miamis Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies. A member of Mitt Romneys staff phoned Gomez last year to get his advice on the topics that Romney should address when he visits Miami. Gomezs answer wasnt Cuba but jobs and the economy. Its not that Cuban-Americans are no longer interested in Cuba, Gomez says, but that they are tired of the same thing over and over again. Theres a growing consensus among Cuban-Americans that lifting

the embargo wont help the Castros retain power as some once thought because the regime has been thoroughly entrenched for more than five decades. When Fidel Castro became ill six years ago, some experts thought the end was near, but today they discuss a variety of scenarios. As Jose Gabilondo of FIUs Cuban Research Institute explains it: The logic of the U.S. embargo is Lets create conditions of civil unrest in Cuba by creating conditions of economic hardship such that there will be a popular uprising that will lead to a revolution. I reject that approach. I dont think it makes sense. The other approach, Gabilondo says, is to realize that transition is already happening in Cuba slowly, and one deal at a time. A Vietnam-Style Scenario The most likely scenario, many experts believe, is for Cuba to follow a
path similar to Vietnams continuing as an authoritarian socialist state but also opening up trade with the United States. Several CubanAmerican groups are already gearing up for this possibility, which comes with the prospect of huge profits for American companies once the embargo is lifted. Theres also a sentiment in the community that opening

up trade might also provide the Cuban

government with an incentive to be less repressive. But while Raul Castro the current leader of Cuba appears to be more open than his brother to economic reform, Jorge Duany, director of FIUs Cuban Research Institute, emphasizes that neither Castro wants more than one party, free elections or a free-market economy. A small step in economic reform came two

years ago when the Cuban government authorized 99-year commercial leases, and as of last year, Cubans could also sell their houses. But private businesses are still very difficult to start with a two-year backlog of license applications. Just a few days ago there were signs that the Castro government is trying to take advantage of the changes in U.S. politics and strategy of the Cuban-American community: The government in Havana reiterated its willingness to negotiate the release of Alan Gross, an American contractor who has spent more than 2 1/2 years in jail on charges of trying to install Internet technology to undermine the government. The Cuban government has raised its profile as mediator in Colombias peace talks with FARC, the communist guerrilla group that Cuba has supported. If mediation succeeds and FARC becomes a legitimate political party, the U.S. is likely to remove Cuba from its list of terrorist nations a step that makes it easier to lift the embargo. The embargo forbids American companies from importing goods from Cuba and from selling anything but agricultural goods to the country. American firms are currently allowed to export agricultural products to Cuba. The embargo doesnt affect the ability of Americans to send up to $10,000 a day to Cuba, a provision that lets Cuban-Americans help family members who remain on the island. These remittances total more than $2 billion a year. Lucrative Market The

stakes are high for post-embargo trade. Cuba has a gross domestic product (in purchasing power parity) of about $114 billion, putting it in a league with Ecuador and New Zealand.
Companies from dozens of countries including Spain, France, Venezuela and Canada are already profiting by trade with Cuba. Miami attorney Zamora, who gives legal advice to companies in the U.S. and throughout Latin America, said these

are some of the major opportunities for American companies: Construction. Many houses, for example, are in need of repair. Resorts, including retirement communities, golf courses and other sports facilities. Oil refineries (assuming the success of continued oil exploration). Infrastructure, especially highways, ports and power plants. (Earlier this month, some five million residents of western Cuba were without electricity after a massive blackout.) Biotechnology and health-care facilities. Travel to, from and on the island. Many businesses, especially in Florida, are already preparing for trade and investment in post-embargo Cuba, and several Cuba trade groups have started up in Miami and Tampa, among other cities. Trade advocates point out that if U.S. companies dont start doing business in Cuba, foreign corporations are almost certain to step up their activities there. The
French, for example, pulled back their investments when European economies tanked several years ago. They now hope to increase investment in Cuba from a recent level of 150 million euros (about $196 million) to 250 million euros (about $327 million) a year.

Trade with Cuba would expand freedom and undermine Castro

Bandow, 12 http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/the-pointless-cuba-embargo-7834 Time to End the Cuba Embargo Doug Bandow |
December 11, 2012 Doug Bandow is a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute. A former Special Assistant to President Ronald Reagan, he is the author of several books, including Foreign Follies: America's New Global Empire.//JH The administration should move now, before congressmen are focused on the next election. President Obama should propose legislation to drop (or at least significantly loosen) the embargo. He also could use his authority to relax sanctions by, for instance, granting more licenses to visit the island. Ending

the embargo would have obvious economic benefits for both Cubans and Americans. The U.S. International Trade Commission estimates American losses alone from the embargo as much as $1.2 billion annually. Expanding economic opportunities also might increase pressure within Cuba for further economic reform. So far the regime has taken small steps, but rejected significant change. Moreover, thrusting more Americans into Cuban society could help undermine the ruling system. Despite
Fidel Castros decline, Cuban politics remains largely static. A few human rights activists have been released, while Raul Castro has used party purges to entrench loyal elites. Lifting the embargo would be no panacea. Other countries invest in and trade with Cuba to no obvious political impact. And the lack of widespread economic reform makes it easier for the regime rather than the people to collect the benefits of trade, in contrast to China. Still, more U.S. contact would have an impact. Argued trade specialist Dan Griswold, American tourists would boost the earnings of Cubans who rent rooms, drive taxis, sell art, and operate restaurants in their homes. Those dollars would then find their way to the hundreds of freely priced farmers markets, to carpenters, repairmen, tutors, food venders, and other entrepreneurs. The Castro dictatorship ultimately will end up in historys dustbin. But it will continue to cause much human hardship along the way. The Heritage Foundations John Sweeney complained nearly two decades ago that the United States must not abandon the Cuban people by relaxing or lifting the trade embargo against the communist regime. But the dead hand of half a century of failed policy is the worst breach of faith with the Cuban people. Lifting

sanctions would be a victory not for Fidel Castro, but for the power of free people to spread liberty. As Griswold argued, commercial engagement is the best way to encourage more open societies abroad. Of course, there are no guarantees. But lifting the embargo would have a greater likelihood of success than continuing a policy which has failed. Some day the Cuban people will be free. Allowing more contact with Americans likely would make that day come sooner.

Sanctions Collapse Democracy

The embargo is a hidden veil for antiterrorism operations, impedes attempts at democracy in Cuba
Valdes 11 (Elpidio, founder of a political blog focusing on ethical issues, The US Embargo Against Cuba A Detailed Analysis, 6/23/11, http://elpidiovaldes.wordpress.com/2011/06/23/the-us-embargoagainst-cuba-a-detailed-analysis/, MDM) The US President has the authority to lift the embargo, with Congressional approval, only if certain conditions are met within Cuba, namely that a transitional government is in place and that a democratic process is established. However, the President can also send a clear message to Congress on the necessity of adopting a new approach towards Cuba in line with the foreign policy of his administration and in compliance with 17 successive resolutions from the UN General Assembly calling for the lifting of the embargo, and similar calls
from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. The economic, trade and financial sanctions against Cuba, compounded by the lack of measures from the US government to monitor and alleviate the negative impact of the embargo on the Cuban population, are defeating the purpose of the provisions of the ICESCR, in particular with regards to advancing the rights of the Covenant through international co-operation. The US government is also acting contrary to the Charter of the United Nations by restricting the direct import of medicine and medical equipment and supplies, and by imposing those restrictions on companies operating in third countries. No

one familiar with US practices in the region or elsewhere can possibly believe that the goal of intensive US terror operations against Cuba and harsh economic warfare was intended to bring democracy to the Cuban people. That is just propaganda, unusually vulgar in this case. The actual reasons for the terror and economic warfare were explained
clearly at the very outset: the goal was to cause rising discomfort among hungry Cubans so that they would overthrow the regime (Kennedy); to bring about hunger, desperation, and overthrow of the government (Eisenhowers State Department). The Kennedys Latin American advisor Arthur Schlesinger advised the incoming president, is

threat of Cuba, as that successful independent development there might stimulate others who suffer from similar problems to follow the same course, so that the system of US domination might unravel. The liberal Democratic administrations were outraged over Cubas successful defiance of US policies going back to the Monroe Doctrine, which was intended to
ensure obedience to the US will in the hemisphere. For decades a large majority of Americans have wanted to establish normal relations with Cuba. In more recent years, substantial US business interests (agribusiness, energy, others) are in favor of that too. Of course, the US is entirely isolated in the world in maintaining the embargo; at the UN it can only garner support, reflexively, from Israel and a few Pacific dependencies. But the

policy persists, causing bitter suffering among Cubans, impeding economic development, and undermining moves towards more internal democracy. If the US is to maintain any shred of credibility on an international level, it must end the embargo on Cuba. Otherwise, all the talk about democracy and freedom is exactly that: just talk!

The embargo is counterproductive in solving democracy problems

Griswold 2 (Daniel, director of the Cato Institute's Center for Trade Policy Studies, No: The Embargo Harms Cubans and Gives Castro an Excuse for the Policy Failures of His Regime, 5/27/02, http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/no-embargo-harms-cubans-gives-castro-excuse-policyfailures-regime, MDM) Former president Jimmy Carters five-day visit to Cuba arguably did more to promote freedom on that oppressed island than the U.S. governments trade and travel embargo has accomplished in four decades. In a live, televised speech to the people of Cuba, Carter challenged his host, communist dictator Fidel Castro, to allow free speech, free elections and free religious worship. In addition to publicizing a pro-democracy petition campaign that the state-run Cuban media had ignored, Carter challenged the U.S. government to lift its trade and travel embargo, a position entirely consistent with his demand for more human rights in Cuba. Since 1960, Americans have been barred from trading with, investing in or traveling to Cuba. The embargo had a national-security rationale before 1991, when Castro served as the
Soviet Unions proxy in the Western Hemisphere. But all that changed with the fall of Soviet communism. Today, a decade after losing billions in annual economic aid from its former sponsor, Cuba is only a poor, dysfunctional nation of 11 million people that poses no threat to U.S. or regional security. A 1998 U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency report concluded that, Cuba does not

pose a significant military threat to the U.S. or to other countries in the region. The report declared Cubas military forces residual and defensive. Some officials in the Bush administration charge that Castros government may be supplying biological-weapons material to rogue states and terrorists abroad, but the evidence is not conclusive. And even if it were true, maintaining a comprehensive trade embargo would be a blunt and ineffective lever for change. The Cuban embargo already is tighter than U.S. economic sanctions against Iraq, even though Iraq is a far

If the goal of U.S. policy toward Cuba is to help its people achieve freedom and a better life, the economic embargo has failed completely. Its economic effect is to make the people of Cuba worse-off by depriving them of lower-cost food and other goods that could be bought from the United States. It means less independence for Cuban workers and entrepreneurs, who could be earning dollars from American tourists and fueling private-sector growth. Meanwhile, Castro and his ruling elite enjoy a comfortable, insulated lifestyle by extracting any meager surplus produced by their captive subjects. Cuban families are not the only victims of the embargo. Many of the dollars Cubans could earn from U.S. tourists would come
greater security threat. back to the United States to buy American products, especially farm goods. The American Farm Bureau estimates that Cuba could eventually become a $1 billion agricultural-export market for products of U.S. farmers and ranchers. The embargo stifles another $250 million in potential annual exports of fertilize r, herbicides, pesticides and tractors. According to a study last year

the embargo actually enhances Castros standing by giving him a handy excuse for the manifest failures of his oppressive communist system. He can rail for hours about the suffering the embargo inflicts on Cubans, even though the damage done by his domestic policies is far worse. If the embargo were lifted, the Cuban people would be a bit less deprived and Castro would have no one else to blame for the shortages and stagnation that will persist without real market reforms. Congress mistakenly raised the embargo to a new level in 1996 with the passage of the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act. Known as the
by the U.S. International Trade Commission, the embargo costs American firms between $684 million and $1.2 billion per year. As a foreign-policy tool, Helms-Burton act, it threatens to punish foreign-based companies alleged to engage in the wrongful trafficking in property confiscated by the Castro regime. The law is lega lly flawed because it allows U.S. courts to rule on actions of parties who were not U.S. citizens when the alleged offense took place. As a foreign-policy tool, the law perversely punishes not the Castro regime itself, but some of our closest allies, such as Canada and the European Union. Economic sanctions rarely work. Trade and investment sanctions against Burma, Iran, Iraq, and North Korea have failed to change the behavior of any of those oppressive regimes; sanctions have only deepened the deprivation of the very people we are trying to help. President George W. Bush and Republican leaders in Congress understand that economic engagement with China offers the best hope for encouraging human rights and political reforms in that country, yet they fail to apply that same thinking to Cuba. Pressure has been building in Congress for a new policy toward Cuba. Two years ago Congress voted to allow limited sales of food and medical supplies to Cuba on a cash-only basis, and the House voted by wide margins in 2000 and 2001 to lift the travel ban (although that provision died in the Senate). Both the Senate and the House voted this spring in favor of third-party financing for farm exports to Cuba while debating this years farm bill, but the provision was stripped from the final bill in the conference committee. A new House caucus, the Cuban Working Group, composed of 20 Democrats and 20 Republicans, unveiled a plan recently for easing the embargo. Speaking for the group, Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.)

For over 40 years, our policy toward Cuba has yielded no results. Castro hasnt held free and fair elections, he hasnt improved human rights and he hasnt stopped preaching his hate for democracy and the U.S. Its time to try something new. Instead of relaxing the failed Cuban embargo, the Bush administration wants to
delivered a withering indictment of U.S. policy: continue the status quo. In a speech on May 20, the president reaffirmed his support for keeping the trade and travel embargoes in place until the Cuban government holds free elections. The administration already has quadrupled the number of Americans cited for violating the travel ban in 2001 compared with the number cited the last year of the Clinton administration. For example, one 75-year-old retired schoolteacher was fined $1,000 for a recent bicycle tour through rural Cuba. According to U.S. law, citizens can travel more or less freely to such axis of evil countries as Iran and North Korea. But if Americans want to visit Cuba legally, they need to be a former president or some other well-connected VIP or a Cuban-American. The strongest supporters of the Cuban trade embargo are Cuban-Americans concentrated in Southern Florida an important constituency in a key electoral state. Yet those very same Cuban-Americans routinely and massively violate the spirit if not the letter of the embargo. Each year, they send $800 million in hard-dollar remittances to their friends and families back in Cuba; another 100,000 Cuban-Americans actually visit their homeland each year through a special program for emergency visits (most of which occur aroun d the Christmas holiday). In the name of politics,

Lifting or modifying the embargo would not be a victory for Castro or his oppressive regime. It would be an overdue acknowledgment that the four-decade-old embargo has failed and that commercial engagement is the best way to encourage more-open societies abroad. The U.S. government can and should continue to criticize the Cuban governments abuse of human rights, while allowing expanding trade and tourism to undermine Castros authority from below.
Cuban-American leaders want to restrict the freedom of other Americans to visit Cuba while retaining that freedom for themselves.

The embargo fails to cause political change, only results in social problems for Cuban citizens
Donovan 3 (Gill, National Catholic Reporter expert contributor, Dissident says embargo won't lead to democracy, 1/24/03, Proquest,
MDM)

Democratic changes in Cuba will not come through a U.S. economic embargo but through worldwide support for peaceful domestic reform movements, said a leading Cuban human rights activist. The Cuban
people, not U.S. foreign policy, must decide the changes needed in Cuba, said Oswaldo Paya Sardinas, who led a petition drive in 2002 seeking a referendum on political and economic reforms. Paya Sardinas, a Catholic, spoke Jan. 10 at Georgetown University in Washington, two days after meeting briefly with the pope in Vatican City. Cubans

need to "de-Americanize" their struggle for democratic reforms, he said. U.S. foreign policy "is not a factor for change" in communist-ruled Cuba, he said. "The primary problem is in the Cuban system," with its lack of freedoms and lack of respect for constitutional rights, said Paya Sardinas. He said change must come from inside Cuba through peaceful reform groups such as his Christian Freedom Movement. Sardinas said he favors loosening the embargo so that vital foods and medicines could be sent to Cuba because the embargo hurts the great majority of the Cuban people and has no effect on Cuba's ruling elite.

The embargo is a total failure that has only strengthened the Castro regime.
Hunter-Bowman, 12 http://www.fpif.org/blog/cuba_ever_the_scapegoat_closest_to_hand
Cuba: Ever the Scapegoat Closest to Hand By Jess Hunter-Bowman, April 4, 2012, Jess Hunter-Bowman is Associate Director of Witness for Peace, a nonprofit organization with a 30-year history analyzing U.S. economic and military policy in Latin America. //JH Why, in an era of unprecedented partisanship gridlock, is there such widespread support among Washington's leading politicians for an outdated and inhumane embargo? It's certainly not because the policy has succeeded. The embargo began in 1960, soon after the successful revolution led by Fidel Castro ousted dictator Fulgencio Batista and nationalized a great deal of property belonging to U.S. corporations and citizens. Washington

has amended and tightened the embargo, even expanding its reach to punitive measures against foreign companies doing business with Cuba, many times in its half-century of failure. The embargo certainly hasn't weakened Cuba's regime. Nor has it changed its political or economic systems. In fact, the embargo may have helped brothers Fidel and Ral Castro retain power by offering a ready-made excuse to point to when things go poorly in the country. While leaving the government unscathed, the embargo has had a punishing impact on the Cuban people. From restricting the availability of medication to limiting access to technology, it has caused widespread hardship. Last
September, Cuban Vice Foreign Minister Abelardo Moreno suggested the embargo had cost his country a total of more than $104 billion in economic damages.

The embargo is ineffective hurts the US more than it hurts Cuba

Stephens and Dunscomb 9 Stephens is the executive director of The Center for Democracy in the Americas, Dunscomb is a
consultant at The Center for Democracy in the Americas. For eight years, she worked as research director and then segment producer for the McLaughlin Group (Sara Stephens and Alice Dunscomb, 9 Ways for US to Talk to Cuba and for Cuba to Talk to US, 2009, The center for democracy in the Americas, http://www.scribd.com/doc/10323598/9-Ways-for-US-to-Talk-to-Cuba-and-for-Cuba-to-Talk-to-US#download, JL) Consider this anomaly. For

an embargo to be effective, logically itseems, it would have to be enforced by a large and unified numberof nations; otherwise, its not an embargo its a sieve. While theU.S. economic embargo of Cuba is arguably the most restrictive set of sanctions applied by the U.S. to any nation in the world, America isthe only nation applying this embargo to Cuba. The U.S. does notengage in diplomatic relations with Cuba, but more than 180 nationsdo. Tourism on the island from other nations has grown substantially as an industry. The number of tourists grew from 340,000 in 1990
tomore than 2,300,000 in 2005, 8 with the majority coming from Canada,Italy, the United Kingdom, Spain and Mexico. 9 Recovering from thedeparture of the Russians at the end of the Cold War, Cuba was ableto fashion an economy

that grew as fast as any in Latin America. Alliesand adversaries alike do business with Cuba, selling everything fromtelecommunications equipment to agricultural products.Furthermore, the embargo is designed to punish Cuba; in fact, itappears to punish the United States in a number of significant waysinjurious to the larger national interest. One of the most significant
isenergy policy, an issue that cuts across both economic and nationalsecurity concerns. Cuba has staggering offshore reserves of oil andgas. In order to explore and recover these energy resources, Cuba hassigned concessions with several foreign oil companies, includingRepsol (Spain), Norsk Hydro (Norway), ONGC (India), PdVSA (Venezuela),Petronas (Malaysia), PetroVietnam (Vietnam), and Petrobras (Brazil).China has focused on onshore oil extraction in the Pinar del Rioprovince. 10 But at a time when the U.S. Congress has evidenced a new willingness to reverse a long-standing ban on offshore drilling, 9 Ways authors Amy Myers Jaffe and Ronald Soligo point out that our sanc-tions ensure that we are the odd man out in this obvious opportunity for exploring new energy resources.

They have the link wrong--sanctions are a tool of punishment between unequal powers.
Naim, 13 http://carnegieendowment.org/2013/02/14/long-live-sanctions/fh0i
Moiss NamOP-ED FEBRUARY 14, 2013 Moiss Nam SENIOR ASSOCIATE INTERNATIONAL ECONOMICS PROGRAM//JH

The word sanction is an unpleasant one. It implies the punishment that someone with power (parent, teacher, boss, judge) inflicts on someone less powerful who is forced to submit. In international relations, sanctions have a well-earned bad reputation. The more powerful nations tend to use them to force policy shifts or even changes in leadership in other countries. They seldom work. Instead, they tend to penalize the already-suffering population of the sanctioned country, more than the tyrants who misgovern it. The irrational and counterproductive US embargo on Cuba is a good example. The embargo,
which began in 1960, has served only to give the Castro brothers half a century of excuses to justify the islands bankruptcy. One rare and contrasting example is that of the successful sanctions on South Africa in the mid-1980s. The US Congress imposed severe economic sanctions on the country until it abolished apartheid and freed Nelson Mandela, among other conditions. Europe and Japan joined in. The embargo wreaked havoc in the South African economy, leading its government to eventually reform the segregationist laws and free Mandela. But the

list of sanctions that have accomplished their stated goals is very short. Therefore,

criticizing the use of international sanctions, denouncing their injustice and futility, and designating them a hangover of colonialism is frequent and easy. But what if there was a new class of sanctions, more effective, and targeted on the leaders of the country whose behavior the
international community wants to change? In Iraq, for example, would it not have been better to rely on this option, and thus avoid the terrible war and its aftermath? In Iran, would it not be better to allow the sanctions to force the government to limit its nuclear program to peaceful uses, rather than embarking on a war with dire and immense global consequences? Of course it would.

Squo Doesnt Solve

Cuba is still incredibly oppressive with a poor human rights record
State Dept Human Rights Report, 12 Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor Country Reports on Human Rights Practices
for 2012 Cuba http://www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/humanrightsreport/index.htm#wrapper State Dept//JH

Cuba is an authoritarian state led by Raul Castro, who is president of the council of state and council of ministers, Communist Party
(CP) first secretary, and commander in chief of security forces. The constitution recognizes the CP as the only legal party and the superior leading force of society and of the state.

The October municipal elections were neither free nor fair. A CP candidacy commission preapproved all candidates for National Assembly elections anticipated for 2013. Security forces reported to a national leadership that included members of the military and conducted a range of oppressive actions and behaviors against civil rights activists and ordinary citizens alike. The principal human rights abuses were: abridgement of the right of citizens to change the government; government threats, intimidation, mobs, harassment, and detentions to prevent free expression and peaceful assembly; and a record number of politically motivated and at times violent short-term detentions. The following additional human rights
abuses continued: unlawful use of force, harsh prison conditions, arbitrary arrests, selective prosecution, and denial of fair trial. Authorities interfered with privacy and engaged in pervasive monitoring of private communications. The government did not respect freedom of speech and the press; severely restricted Internet access and maintained a monopoly on media outlets; circumscribed academic freedoms; limited freedom of movement; and maintained significant restrictions on the ability of religious groups to meet and worship.

The government refused to recognize independent human rights groups or permit them to function legally. In addition, the government continued to prevent workers from forming independent unions and abrogated workers rights. Most human rights abuses were official acts committed at the direction of the government. Impunity for the perpetrators remained widespread.

Russia SOI

Russia 1AC
Russia is expanding into Cubaserves as the starting point for influence in the entire LA region
RIA Novosti 08 One of the largest news agencies in Russia (Cuba holds key role in Russian foreign policy - envoy in Havana, RIA
Novosti, 12/26/08, http://en.rian.ru/world/20081226/119182204.html)//Bwang HAVANA December 26, 2008 (RIA Novosti) - Russian-Cuban

relations will serve as the starting point to advance Russia's interests in the entire Latin American region, a Russian diplomat said on Friday in an interview with RIA Novosti. Russia's ambassador to Cuba, Mikhail Kamynin, said that "Cuba holds a key role" in Russia's foreign policy because Cuba "has much authority and a lot of influence in the region." The diplomat noted that cooperation with Cuba is not simply bilateral, but more of a starting point for Russian interests in Latin America and the Caribbean. According to Kamynin, Russia and Cuba have always had good relations and this year was particularly notable for the sharp increase of bilateral activity in practically all spheres. "One of the key moments that characterized our relations on a new level was, undoubtedly, the official visit to Havana by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev at the end of November," the ambassador said. The visit was the first by a Russian leader since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. Kamynin expressed his confidence that 2009 would prove to be "just as dynamic in character" as 2008 was. "In January, there is already an intergovernmental session planned in Moscow and preparations for a Russian Federation Council delegation to visit Havana, headed by the chair of the Audit Chamber, Sergei Stepashin," the ambassador said. "There will also be an official visit by Cuban President Raul Castro to Moscow in early 2009." The Russian diplomat said that during 2008 there was an increase in joint cooperation between the two countries in energy, transportation, tourism, pharmaceuticals, mining and construction, among other spheres. Preliminary information shows that the turnover of goods between Russia and Cuba in 2008 will be close to $400 million,
according to the ambassador. "There was also an increase in Russian tourists coming to Cuba. This year, there were approximately 40,000 Russian tourists," he said. The

recent port call of the Russian Northern Fleet's Admiral Chabenko to Havana in mid-December should not be looked at as simply cooperation between the countries' armed forces, Kamynin noted. "This was a huge political event that supplemented other important events within the framework of bilateral relations [in 2008] and demonstrated that Russia has returned to Cuba with all seriousness and for a long time to come," he said. Castro told the ambassador that such visits should become regular
occurrences.

Normalizing relations with Cuba crowds out Russia

Blank 09 Research Professor of National Security Affairs at the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College (Stephen, Russia
in Latin America: Geopolitical Games in the USs Neighborhood, IFRI, April 2009, pdf)//Bwang The only way in which Russian policy truly threatens the US and Latin America is its military and intelligence support for Chavez and similar leaders. This support is passed on to insurgents while strengthening Chavez and his allies. Adequate

responses to such threats are inherently economic and political, and only military as a last resort. Washington can do much more to facilitate security in Latin America: regenerating its own economy; simultaneously opening up trade markets and eliminating barriers to Latin American exports; enhancing multilateralism and interoperability among defense forces as requested by Latin American militaries; and beginning the normalization of Cuba. Havana is no longer the threat it was, Venezuela has claimed that dubious honor. Rehabilitating Cuba, given that Castros days are clearly numbered, would take the air out of Chavezs balloon; it is quite clear that Havana would probably welcome a path towards better relations with the US, especially the economic benefits they would inevitably bring. A policy with a more symbolically important impact upon Latin America is currently difficult to imagine. Nonetheless, there should be no illusion that the security problems that plague this region are easily overcome, quite the opposite. But that is all the more reason why the US cannot ignore the area and let it drift to Moscow, Tehran, and Beijin for want of a better alternative. That outcome would only confirm once

again that in world politics, there is no such thing as benign neglect. Instead

neglect is malign and engenders negative results for the negligent state along with those neglected. The policies of the Bush administration allowed Russia to gain a foothold in Latin American politics, a result of Washingtons negligence; under President Obama, the US should reverse those outcomes and demonstrate what liberal democracy in action can truly accomplish.

Lack of US presence invites Russia to use Cuba as a means to project power and expand influence
Lee 08 President of Foreign Policy Research Insititute; authority on international crime and narcotics and nuclear security issues; a Stanford
Ph.D.; president of Global Advisory Services, a McLean, Virginia-based consulting firm (Rens, Rethinking the Embargo, Foreign Affairs, November/December 2008, http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/64618/rens-lee/rethinking-the-embargo)//Bwang

Current U.S. policy makes Cuba a target of opportunity for a resurgent and increasingly hostile Russia. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin talks openly about "restoring [Russia's] position in Cuba," and hints are surfacing in Moscow that Russia might reestablish a military and intelligence presence on the island in response to the planned U.S. missile defense shield in eastern Europe. Points of cooperation under consideration include using Cuba as a refueling stop for long-range bombers and for reconnaissance ships and aircraft and reopening a gigantic Soviet-era electronic monitoring and surveillance facility near Havana. A state visit to Havana in July by the hard-line Russian deputy prime minister, Igor Sechin (a reported former KGB agent and a member of Putin's inner circle), and the head of Russia's Security Council, Nikolai Patrushev, could presage a new strategic dialogue between Moscow and Havana, even though the visit was officially touted as investment-related. Also, it is hardly coincidental that the warming of Cuban-Russian ties and the discussion of a renewed military relationship have followed closely on the accession of Raul Castro as the de facto Cuban leader.
Moscow has historically regarded Raul's brother Fidel as emotionally volatile, a view stemming from Fidel's erratic behavior during the Cuban missile crisis, when, in the Soviets' view, Fidel was trying to provoke a U.S.-Soviet nuclear conflict. With apparatchik -- in charge, Russia

Raul -- who resembles a Soviet-style may feel more comfortable deploying strategic or intelligence assets on the island.

Russian expansion is hostile reignites Cold War hostilities

Walle 12 Research Associate at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs (Walter, Russia Turns to the South for Military and Economic
Alliances, Council on Hemispheric Affairs, 5/8/12, http://www.coha.org/russia-turns-to-the-south-for-military-and-economicalliances/)//Bwang Quite clearly, Russias

interest in Latin America is escalating. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, argued in his there is great attractiveness in establishing bilateral relations, especially when three of the top twenty emerging economies -Mexico, Brazil and Argentina- are in Latin America.[23] Lavrov has also stated that the Russian Federation has an interest in joining the InterAmerican Development Bank, perhaps a move to better accommodate Russian interests in the region, while at the same time neutralizing American influence. Demonstrably, Russia has been developing cooperative relationships with prominent organizational bodies of the region, such as the OAS (Organization of American States), and has ratified visafree travel agreements with countries like Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, Brazil, Chile, and Argentina. In his article, Lavrov
article, The New Stage of Development of Russian-Latin American Relations, that argues that Russias intention behind quests for partnerships is the establishment of non-ideologized relationships with Latin American countries, relationships that could be of mutual benefit to all parties involved. However, the

Russian stance on Latin America ultimately may be cause for apprehension. The establishment of bilateral, cordial relations between Russia and Latin American countries could evolve to a proxy, neo-Cold War scenario. If the situation in the regions worsens, some countries would be funded and supported by the U.S., while others, including several members of Latin Americas New Left, would become the major beneficiaries of Moscow. An analogy of such practice is
the Georgia Russia crisis that surfaced in August of 2008. During this brief war, the U.S. sent military aid to Georgia[24] on warships to territory Russia considers its backyard (i.e. the Caucasus and the Black Sea), infuriating Moscow. A month after the conflict erupted, ostensibly in retaliation, Russia sent two Tu-160 bombers to conduct military exercises with Washingtons least favorite nation in Latin America: Venezuela[25]. More importantly, in November of 2008 Moscow conducted war games with Caracas, in which a small Russian fleet was sent to the Caribbean to participate in joint naval maneuvers with the Venezuelan navy.[26] This was a powerful symbolic act: as it was the first time that Russian warships had visited the Caribbean since the Cuban Missile Crisis. In

the wake of the post-Georgia conflict, such

joint military maneuvers between Russia and Venezuela were revitalized, and helped to build up the tensions between Washington and Moscow, sending strong signals of a Cold War revival. Furthermore, in the
aftermath of the declarations of independence by the breakaway regions of Georgia, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, Venezuela[27] and Nicaragua[28] were alone among Latin American countries in recognizing the independence of the new republics.

Deepening the Cuba-Russia relationship leads to Russian basing on the island

Inter-American Dialogue 12 U.S. based think tank for policy analysis, exchange, and communication on issues in Western
Hemisphere affairs (Are External Tensions Entangling Latin American Countries? Center for Economic and Policy Research, 8/10/12, http://www.cepr.net/documents/CEPR_News/LAA120810.pdf)//Bwang A Stephen Johnson, senior fellow and director of the Americas Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies: "It may or may not be true that Russia's government is seeking to build resupply bases for its navy in Cuba, Vietnam and the Seychelles islands. While Russian navy officials say 'da,' the foreign ministry says 'nyet.' Similar talk of establishing bases elsewhere, such as Venezuela, has not materialized. In any case, it would not present a direct threat unless such a facility became an entry point for hostile arms similar to the nuclear-tipped missiles that provoked the 1962 crisis. Like any other state, Russia

can strike diplomatic agreements to base military units in other countries. On the other hand, it would be a challenge. First, it would rekindle a military relationship that ended when Russia transferred its signals intelligence facility at Lourdes to the Cuban government in 2002. A new base might be a shot in the arm to the Cuban economy, helping the Castro brothers hang on to aspects of their old command economy without going cold turkey for market reforms. A base could also serve as a hub for military weapons sales to other Latin American nations when the region needs help in fighting transnational crime. The Soviet Union fell more than 20 years ago, but Russia still has large military industries and needs to sell arms more than washing machines. Its prime customers would, like Cuba, be in the Bolivarian alliance. Second, a Russian navy station in Cuba might complicate U.S. politics, specifically any plans a U.S. administration might have to hand back Guantanamo Naval
Base in the near future, for which Cuba's current government refuses to cash our rent checks. At a time when U.S. Northern and Southern Commands are gearing more toward military support for civilian law enforcement missions, it

would reintroduce a strategic deterrence component into joint exercises and training. That might not be a bad thing, but it would argue for more U.S. defense spending on the Western Hemisphere. All of which seems to argue that recent threat trends in the Americas are not very predictive and that certain old alliances won't go easily into the sunset." A Stephen Wilkinson, chairman of the International Institute for the Study of Cuba: "Russia is in military talks with Cuba for three reasons. One is economic, related to Russian investment in Cuban nickel and oil and the need to guarantee protection of these investments. Another factor is geostrategic. Recent events in Syria have confirmed Russian fears of the long-term strategic aims of the United States. The Russians are very aware that the United States and Western Europe have been supporting the rebels in Syria and they see this as an indirect attack upon their interests as Assad provides them with a naval base at Tartus, on the Mediterranean. The third reason is possibly rather more personal, Vladimir Putin has turned his face against Washington since his recent re-election because he perceived a U.S. hand in organizing the protests against him. From Cuba's point of view, having a Russian military base would be a guarantee of security since it would mean that U.S. military action against it would be less likely. If Washington would not wish for Havana to have such an ally, it ought to reconsider its own policy toward the island. At present, the embargo, and especially the Helms Burton Law, makes it sensible for the Cuban government to seek alliances with as many powers as possible in order to protect itself. U.S. military presence in Latin America has grown in recent years. There are now 24 bases including two new ones in
Chile and Argentina. Seven bases in Colombia are being expanded. The justification for this expansion is the war on drugs and for humanitarian intervention purposes. However, it should come as no surprise that this is not the way that Cuba or its closest allies such as Hugo Chvez or Evo Morales view them. They see the bases as potential threats to their independence and sovereignty and a sign that Washington's hegemonic designs on the region are very much alive." A Wayne S. Smith, senior fellow and director of the Cuba Project at the Center for International Policy: "Given

the history of the 1962 U.S.-Soviet missile crisis, for the Russians now to propose exploring with the Cubans the setting up of naval bases on the island would seem a rather maladroit idea. The United States made it clear in 1962 that the positioning of offensive nuclear missiles on the island was unacceptable and demanded that they be withdrawn. The world has never been so close to an allout nuclear war. Fortunately, both Kennedy and
Khrushchev showed themselves to be sensible men. They reached an understanding under which Khrushchev agreed to withdraw the missiles and Kennedy gave assurances that the United States would not invade Cuba. Subsequently, without informing the United States,

the Soviets began building a submarine base on the island, but when it was made clear to them that the United States would consider this a violation of the Kennedy-Khrushchev understanding of 1962, work on the base was quietly

halted and never resumed. The United States should of course oppose the positioning of Russian bases in Cuba today, as should the other countries of the hemisphere. They would serve no reasonable purpose and could only unnecessarily add to tensions. The United States has not increased its military presence in Latin America. There is no reason for the
Russians to do so."

Increased Cuba-Russia relations causes war

Richter 08 Staff Writer for New York Times (Paul, Moscow-Havana ties worry U.S. 9/1/08
http://articles.latimes.com/2008/sep/01/world/fg-usrussia1)//Bwang But at a time when Russia has intervened forcefully in Georgia and is extending the global reach of its rebuilt military, some senior officials fear it may not be only bluster. Russia "has strategic ties to Cuba again, or at least, that's where they're going," a senior U.S. official said recently, speaking, like others, on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive implications of the assessments. The

officials said they doubted the Russians would risk stationing nuclear bombers on Cuba. But some believe that Moscow might seek to restore its once-energetic intelligence cooperation with Havana, and to resume limited military cooperation, possibly including refueling stops for aircraft and warships. In the current environment, such contacts would make U.S. officials uneasy, serving as a reminder of a military relationship between Havana and Moscow that stretched from the Cuban Revolution in 1959 until a weakened, post-Soviet Russia finally closed a massive electronic intelligence complex in Lourdes near Havana in 2001. One senior military officer said a return of Russian ships or planes could force additional U.S. deployments in the region. But the Bush administration and Pentagon declined to comment publicly on the implications. "It is very Cold War retro," said a government official. "The topic could be reminiscent of the Cuban missile crisis, and that is a chapter that people don't want to revisit." The Russian Defense Ministry dismissed a report in the newspaper Izvestia in July that quoted an unidentified Russian official as saying the government intended to begin basing Tupolev Tu-160 Blackjack and Tupolev Tu-95 Bear nuclear bombers in Cuba. However, the report was taken seriously enough in Washington that Gen. Norton A. Schwartz, the new Air Force chief of staff, said during his Senate confirmation hearing at the time that sending the bombers would cross a "red line in the sand."

US-Russia War is the greatest risk for nuclear extinction

Frumkin and Helfand 12 *MD, DrPH, School of Public Health, University of Washington; **MD, Physicians for Social Responsibility
(Howard and Ira A Prescription for Survival: Prevention of Nuclear War, American Journal of Preventive Medicine, March 2012, http://www.psr.org/nuclear-weapons/rxforsurvival.pdf)//Bwang Still it is not the arsenals of these new nuclear powers that pose the greatest danger. Ninety-five

percent of the nuclear weapons in the world today remain in the arsenals of the US and Russia. Even under the New START Treaty they are each allowed to keep 1550 deployed strategic nuclear weapons and thousands of non deployed and all of their non strategic warheads. A 2002 study showed that if only 300 of the weapons in the Russian arsenal were targeted at US cities, 70 to 100 million people would die. In addition the attack would destroy the communications and transportation networks and the rest of the social infrastructure on which modern societies depend. Over the following months the vast majority of the population not killed in the initial attack would die of starvation, exposure and disease. The US counterattack on Russia would cause the same level of devastation there.18 As in the case of a regional war in South Asia, the direct effects of this large scale nuclear war would be only a small part of the picture. If the full strategic arsenal allowed under New START were drawn into the conflict, the resulting firestorms in the US and Russia would loft upwards of 150 million tons of debris into the upper atmosphere. In a matter of days, temperatures would plummet across the globe by an average of 8 C. In the interior regions of North America and Eurasia, temperatures would fall as much as 30 C. In the temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere there would not be a single day free of frost for 3 years.19 20 Agriculture would stop, ecosystems would collapse. The vast majority of the human race would starve to death and it is possible that homo sapiens could become extinct.

Cuba-Russia Ties High

Russian military ties with Cuba are strong and will improve in the future
Xinhua 13 Official press agency of the People's Republic of China and the biggest center for collecting information and press conferences
in China (Russia to pursue further military cooperation with Cuba, Global Times, 4/20/13, http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/776242.shtml#.Uc9Mlvm1Fsm)//Bwang

Russia has good military cooperation with Cuba and will continue expanding their military ties, Cuban official
Prensa Latina news agency quoted a Russian general as saying here Friday.

The two countries have collaborated in various military fields such as cadre training, operational combat training and technical cooperation, said Russia's Chief of General Staff Valery Gerasimov, who arrived in Havana on Thursday for a
four-day working visit. He was welcomed by his Cuban counterpart General Alvaro Lopez Miera on Friday and laid a wreath to Cuban pro-independence hero Antonio Maceo at the Cacahual Mausoleum outside Havana. His agenda in Cuba covers touring important tank units and other military units, schools and institutions.

Russia and Cuba were close economic and political allies during the Cold War. But their relations diminished after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 till 2008, when Cuban leader Raul Castro began a very active policy of restoring the old links with Moscow, including mutual visits by the two countries' presidents.

Growing Russia presence in Cuba brings us back to the cold war era, the closest weve been to all out nuclear war
Reid 08 Staff Reporter at Geopolitical Monitor (Marsha, Cuba & Cold War Redux, Geopolitical Monitor, 8/4/08,
http://www.geopoliticalmonitor.com/cuba-russian-us-tensions-august-4-2008-991/)//Bwang In a move aimed

at spiting Washington for its planned missile defence system in Central Europe, Russia has announced it will boost bilateral cooperation with Cuba. Such cooperation would entail Russian participation in the development of Cubas recently discovered oil fields and a potential military presence off the US coast, signaling a deepening of Russian-US tensions evocative of the Cold War. The announcement followed a July 30-31st visit to Cuba by a Russian delegation headed by Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin. The visit involved discussions with Cuban President Raul Castro to revive economic ties between the former Cold War allies in all areas, including oil production. Russian stakes in Cubas lucrative oil sector will no doubt rub salt in the wounds of US companies shut out by a four decadelong embargo, and also mirrors Russias strategic partnership with Venezuela on energy projects. These energy projects would enable the Kremlin to establish an OPEC-like natural gas cartel, gain control over an increasing share of global oil production, and squeeze a US market that gets 10 to 15 per cent of its oil from Venezuela. However, most provocative of the Russian-Cuban alliance is Russias potential to establish a military presence in Cuba, the US backyard. This military presence could take the form of an orbital ballistic missile system or a refueling base for nuclear bombers, and is a direct response to US plans to establish a missile defence system on
Russias doorstep in Central Europe, in addition to extending NATO membership to former Soviet states Georgia and the Ukraine.

Russian ties with Cuba are highrecent Havana visit boosts them
WSJ 13 (Wall Street Journal, Cuba Parliament Leader: Ties With Russia Under Full Expansion, The Wall Street Journal, 5/18/13,
http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20130518-700836.html)//Bwang HAVANA (Xinhua)--Relations

between Cuba and Russia are under full expansion, Esteban Lazo, president of Cuban parliament, said Friday. Lazo made the remarks after signing an agreement with the visiting leader of Russia's senate, Valentina Matviyenko, to boost the parliamentary cooperation between the two countries. The delegation of the Russian Senate arrived Thursday in Havana, headed by Ms. Matviyenko. Mr. Lazo said the visit would boost the "excellent" historical ties between both the governments and the peoples. He also called on Russia to increase the investments to the island
country. Mr. Lazo stressed the importance of the current Russian investments in Cuba's oil sector and expressed the interest of the Cuban

government in extending the cooperation to other areas, such as nickel production, tourism and agriculture. Cuba

isn't just a strategic partner for Russia, but also a friend for whom Russia feels special affection, due to historical connections, Ms. Matviyenko said. Havana and Moscow were close allies during the Cold War era, but after the collapse of the
Soviet Union in 1991, the relations cooled. Since 2005, the bilateral relations have began to improve with the resumption of mutual high-level visits. Currently, Russia figures.

is Cuba's ninth largest trade partner, with a trade volume of $224 million in 2011, according to official

Cuba-Russia Rels War

Russian and Chinese influence in Cuba counter US hegemony
Schez 07 COHA (Council on Hemispheric Affairs) Research Fellow (Alex, COHA Report: Mother Russia Likes What She Now Sees in
Cuba, COHA, 5/1/2007, http://www.coha.org/coha-report-mother-russia-likes-what-she-now-sees-in-cuba/)//Bwang Moscow Evolves a Strategy Similarly, it is unclear if Russia today has drafted a grand-strategy regarding what would be its military and political-diplomatic presence in the Western Hemisphere. However, the

revenues that Moscow now receives from its oil and gas production provides it with the necessary wealth to once again become a major contender for regional influence. Moscow policymakers fully recognize that there is a growing unrest throughout the Western Hemisphere, as regional governments attempt to work their way out from under Washingtons traditional influence and control. Already, the Peoples Republic of China is taking advantage of this loosening situation. Meanwhile, current and future Cuban-Russian relations can be expected to revolve around a well-defined axis: Moscow certainly does not want to lose what is left of the Soviet eras traditional sphere of influence. In the meantime, Havana, evenseeking out new strategic partners in order to counter U.S. hegemony, sees Moscow as a relationship worthy of resuscitating. With inter-state relations based on mutual self-interests, Moscow does not have to search far for reasons to come once
again together with Havana, a factor to keep in mind as U.S. influence in the region palpably decreases.

Plan K/ US Influence
Protecting Cuba key to maintaining the US sphere of influence
Friedman 9 (George, American political scientist and author, founder, chief intelligence officer, financial overseer, and CEO of the private
intelligence corporation STRATFOR, Beneath the U.S. Obsession with Cuba, 4/13/09, http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20090413_beneath_u_s_obsession_cuba, MDM)

Cuba occupies an extraordinarily important geographic position for the United States. It sits astride the access points from the Gulf of Mexico into the Atlantic Ocean, and therefore is in a position to impact the export of U.S. agricultural products via the Mississippi River complex and New Orleans (not to mention
the modern-day energy industrial centers along the Gulf Coast). If New Orleans is the key to the American Midwest's access to the world, Cuba is the key to New Orleans. Access to the Atlantic from the Gulf runs on a line from Key West to the Yucatan Peninsula, a distance of about 380 miles. Running perpendicular through the middle of this line is Cuba. The Straits of Florida, the northern maritime passage from the Gulf to the Atlantic, is about 90 miles wide from Havana to Key West. The Yucatan Channel, the southern maritime passage, is about 120 miles wide. Cuba itself is about 600 miles long. On the northern route, the Bahamas run parallel to Cuba for about half that distance, forcing ships to the south, toward Cuba. On the southern route, after the Yucatan gantlet, the passage out of the Caribbean is made long and complicated by the West Indies. A substantial,

hostile naval force or air power based in Cuba could blockade the Gulf of Mexico -and hence the American heartland. Throughout the 19th century, Cuba was of concern to the United States for this reason. The
moribund Spanish Empire controlled Cuba through most of the century, something the United States could live with. The real American fear was that the British -- who had already tried for New Orleans itself in the War of 1812 -- would expel the Spanish from Cuba and take advantage of the island's location to strangle the United States. Lacking the power to do anything about Spain itself, the United States was content to rely on Madrid to protect Spanish interests and those of the United States. Cuba remained a Spanish colony long after other Spanish colonies gained independence. The Cubans were intensely afraid of both the United States and Britain, and saw a relationship with Spain -- however unpleasant -- as more secure than risking English or American domination. The Cubans had mixed feelings about the prospect of formal independence from Spain followed by unofficial foreign domination. But in 1895, the Cubans rose up against Spain (not for the first time) in what turned into the struggle that would culminate in the island's independence from the country. With a keen interest in Cuba, Washington declared war on Spain in 1898 and invaded Cuba. The Spanish were quickly defeated in the Spanish-American War and soon withdrew from the island. For

the United States, the main goal was less about gaining control of Cuba itself (though that was the net result) than about denying Cuba to other world powers. The United States solved its Cuban problem by establishing a naval base at Guantanamo Bay on the island. Between this base and U.S. naval bases in the
Gulf and on the East Coast, British naval forces in the Bahamas were placed in a vise. By establishing Guantanamo Bay on the southern coast of Cuba, near the Windward Passage between Cuba and Haiti, the United States controlled the southern route to the Atlantic through the Yucatan Channel. For the United States, any

power that threatened to establish a naval presence in Cuba represented a direct threat to U.S. national security. When there were fears during World War I that the Germans might seek to establish Uboat bases in Cuba -- an unrealistic concern -- the United States interfered in Cuban politics to preclude that possibility. But it was the Soviet Union's presence in Cuba during the Cold War that really terrified the Americans. From the Soviet point of view, Cuba served a purpose no other island in the region could serve. Missiles could be based in many places in the region, but only Cuba could bottle up the Gulf of Mexico. Any Soviet planner looking at a map would immediately identify Cuba as a key asset; any American planner looking at the same map would identify Cuba in Soviet hands as a key threat. For the Soviets, establishing a pro-Soviet regime in Cuba represented a geopolitical masterstroke. For the United States, it represented a geopolitical nightmare that had to be reversed. Just as U.S. medium- and intermediate-range ballistic missiles in Turkey put the Soviet heartland in the crosshairs during the Cold War, Soviet missiles deployed operationally in Cuba put the entire U.S. Eastern Seaboard at risk. Mere minutes would have been available for detection and recognition of an attack before impact. In addition,

the missiles' very presence would serve as a significant deterrent to conventional attack on the island -which is why it was so important for the United States not to allow an established missile presence in Cuba. The final outcome of the U.S.-Soviet standoff pivoted on the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, which ended in an American blockade of
Cuba, not a Soviet blockade of the Gulf. It was about missiles, not about maritime access. But the deal that ended the crisis solved the problem for the United States. In return for a U.S. promise not to invade Cuba, the Soviets promised not to place nuclear missiles on the island.

If the Soviets didn't have missiles there, the United States could neutralize any naval presence in Cuba -- and therefore any threat to American trade routes. Fidel Castro could be allowed to survive, but in a position of strategic
vulnerability. One part of Washington's strategy was military, and the other part was economic -- namely, the embargo.

Venezuela/Iran SOI

Venezuela/Iran 1AC
Maduro has cemented the Cuba-Venezuela alliance
Deasy 13 GlobalPost breaking news writer (Kristin Dasy, Venezuelas maduro cozies up to Cuba Globalpost.com, April 28 2013,
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/americas/venezuela/130428/venezuelas-maduro-cozies-cuba) MR

Venezuela's new president visited Cuba on Saturday and signed up for a slew of joint projects, assuring a longtime ally of their continued support, according to Reuters. Cuba, a small communist nation saddled with a US embargo , needs oil-rich Venezuela to shore up its own struggling economy. Therefore, the new Venezuelan leader's visit was watched for signs of commitment, result being: "Cuba/Venezuela Alliance Assured by Castro and Maduro," as The Havana Times reassuringly put it. Officially, Maduro is pretty new on the job, having been elected president earlier this month in a vote contested by the opposition. But his leadership is not expected to stray from the status quo -- the 86-year-old was Hugo Chavez's political protege, and his trip to Havana is yet another sign of dedication to the nation's former leader given the warmth between Chavez and Cuba's Fidel Castro. This was Maduro's first trip to Cuba as president, although he
frequently visited the communist island nation during Chavez's hospitalization, during which time he was already serving as the nation's de facto leader. Chavez died in March. Cuban leader Raul

Castro wrapped up the 13th Cuba-Venezuela Intergovernmental Meeting by calling Venezuela Cubas best friend , as Comrade Fidel has said," reported The Havana Times. Maduro spent five hours talking to "Comrade Fidel," according to Reuters, emerging with this vow of friendship: "We have come to Havana, Cuba, to say to the people of Venezuela, the people of Cuba, all the people of Latin America ... are going to continue working together, we came to ratify a strategic, historic alliance that transcends time, that is more a brotherhood than an alliance ." The two nations signed arrangements for 51 projects, and Maduro promised $2 million in funds for development projects, said Reuters.

And, Cubas dependence on Iran is deepening

Curtain 8 (Joseph W., ECONOMIC AND SECURITY REASONS WHY THE U.S. SHOULD NORMALIZE RELATIONS WITH CUBA Naval
Postgraduate School, June 2008, http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a483591.pdf) MR

Iran and Cuba have also been involved in their own fair share of bilateral agreements. In early November 2007 Iranian Minister of Commerce Masood Mirkazemi signed an agreement with the Cuban government to form a joint shipping company.103 Additionally, trade between Iran and Cuba was estimated to have exceeded $50 million in 2006. Amongst various bilateral agreements, perhaps one of the most significant has been an agreement signed by Irans Export Development Bank and Cubas Foreign Bank in February 2006 with a $90 million credit ceiling to facilitate the export of Iranian goods as well as engineering and technical services to Cuba. The agreement also laid the groundwork for the collaboration between the two countries with respect to banking, trade, industry, and scientific research and development. 104 The Cuban officials at the banking agreement meeting were reportedly so pleased with the growing trade and investment between both countries that they were quoted as saying that they were interested in expansion of relations with Tehran in all areas.105 Some critics could look at the bilateral agreements between Iran and Venezuela and Iran and
Cuba and dismiss them as merely countries seeking to expand their economies in todays ever interconnected globalized world. And certainly when asked, that has been the response from Fidel Castro, Chavez and Ahmadinejad. However, those critics cannot

deny the

potentially explosive effect of adding Iran to the Cuban dependency equation. The trend that is becoming
apparent is that Cuba

is becoming increasingly dependent on countries with deep pockets that pose security threats to the U.S. Though Iran certainly trails Venezuela in the amount of financial dependence, the influence is still there. If Chavez
does indeed become the president of a Cuban- Venezuelan confederation, the confederation would certainly be much more of a threat to the U.S. with Iran as one of its primary allies and trading partners.

The embargo is solidifying the Cuba-Venezuela-Iran axis threatens US stability

Curtain 8 (Joseph W., ECONOMIC AND SECURITY REASONS WHY THE U.S. SHOULD NORMALIZE RELATIONS WITH CUBA Naval
Postgraduate School, June 2008, http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a483591.pdf) MR

If Chavez has a kindred political kindred spirit, it would be Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Like Chavez, he is
best known on the world stage for his inflammatory and incendiary rhetoric. And like Chavez, sometimes his penchant for outrageous statements makes it hard to take him seriously (i.e., Does he really believe the Holocaust did not happen?). Although, conversely, it can be argued that those very same outrageous statements are all the more reason to take him seriously. Both

presidents preside over petro-rich countries and both presidents have made no attempts to hide their disdain for U.S. imperialism. And like those of Venezuela, Irans policies by themselves pose a security threat to the U.S. What causes Ahmadinejads Iran to be perceived as the number one threat to world stability in the Gallup poll and what would cause President Bush to say that he is even more evil than Fidel Castro or Gaddafi is the combination of his inflammatory anti-U.S./anti-Israel rhetoric and his claim that Iran is justified in its pursuit of nuclear power.94 But what gets less press is the fact that Iran, like Venezuela, has begun to invest heavily in Cuba . And like Venezuela, Iran may pose much more of a threat to the U.S. with an alliance with Cuba. Without Cuba, Iran can only pose a threat to the U.S. in the Middle East; however, with Cuba and Venezuela, Iran can bring its threat ninety miles off the shore of the U.S. The April 7, 2007, State
Department Western Hemisphere overview cites concerns about Hugo Chavezs deepened Venezuelan relationships with Iran and Cuba.95 Though the State Departments report is unclassified and certainly is not a comprehensive intelligence report on the extent of the relationship between Venezuela, Cuba and Iran, it is decidedly vague about exactly what the deepened relationship consists of and why the U.S. should be concerned. Yet despite the ambiguous State Department threat assessment linking Venezuela and Cuba to Iran, there is plenty circumstantial evidence that links

of the three nations in what can amount to be a potentially volatile triangular threat to

U.S. interests.

The first impact is nuclear strikes just 90 miles away

Curtain 8 (Joseph W., ECONOMIC AND SECURITY REASONS WHY THE U.S. SHOULD NORMALIZE RELATIONS WITH CUBA Naval
Postgraduate School, June 2008, http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a483591.pdf) MR The reason why the

Iranian alliance with Venezuela and Cuba is so dangerous is that Ahmadinejads Iran could bring the same experience, training and military power to its Western Hemisphere revolutionary brothers as it has
allegedly exported to its Middle Eastern revolutionary brothers. According to various sources, Iran assisted Hezbollah in its 2006 war with Israel by together with Syria supplying them with more than 12,000 Russian made surface-to-air missiles which were used to strike Israel from Lebanon.106 The question U.S. policymakers should be asking is

if Iran supplied Hezbollah 12,000 missiles to strike Israel,

Some critics

what would prevent them from supplying Venezuela or Cuba with missiles to strike the U.S.?
U.S. directly. These critics seem to forget

might suggest that Iran would not supply Venezuela or Cuba with missiles and even if they did Venezuela and or Cuba would never strike the

the Cuban missile crisis. Can the U.S. rule out the possibility of another similar crisis in Cuba with a different benefactor? According to an October 2007 CNN report, Russia sold the Venezuelan
government the same air defense system that they sold the Iranians.107 As an August 2007 Heritage Foundation report speculates, it might be implausible to some, but certainly possible that Chavez

could attempt a Falklands-like conflict by using his new arsenal to pursue Venezuelan land claims against neighboring Colombia, Guyana, and Holland which controls the Dutch Antilles...[or] be tempted to grab the massive oil and natural gas reserves of nearby Trinidad and Tobago.108 In such a Chavez-led Falklands-like scenario, Irans military experience, weapons and training would be invaluable for an attack on the smaller island forces and against the U.S. which would be compelled to defend them. The Cuban missile crisis though was about nuclear missiles not conventional surface-to-air missiles. Perhaps another far-fetched scenario to some, but yet still a possibility is Iran manufacturing nuclear weapons in a world in which Cuba and Venezuela continue their current close alliance. Would that not increase the threat index to the U.S.? Despite a recent National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) revealing that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003, the risk of Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon still exists.109
Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the IAEA, reported in November 2007 that Irans nuclear program was operating 3,000 uraniumenriching centrifuges, which makes them capable of producing fissile material for nuclear weapons. Yet, his report said that agency inspectors had been unable to determine whether the Iranian program sought only to generate electricity or also to build weapons. 110 The NIE report notes that the

rate at which Iran is producing enriched uranium, would allow it to build nuclear weapons by 2013.111 In this context, there are concerns that Irans agreements with Cuba and Venezuela opens the door to deals that are not as benign
as Iran and Venezuelas $200 million dollar investment fund or Iran and Cubas $90 million banking agreement. Instead those deals could potentially lead not only to the manufacturing of cars, bicycles, bricks, cement and scientific research and development, but also to the

scientific research and development and manufacturing of nuclear weapons. There are recent reports that Chavez has stated his intentions to pursue a peaceful nuclear program,112 that he has sought Irans help in building a nuclear reactor in Venezuela and that Iranian scientists may already be working at uranium mines in *Venezuelas+ lower Orinoco River basin.113 So yes, the

Cuban missile crisis is old news. But if the U.S. continues to let Iran and Venezuela wield their influence in Cuba, it might no longer be old news and may very well become new news . Iran attacks cause oil shocks that destroy the economy Michael Moran, 8-20-2010; Foreign Affairs columnist for GlobalPost, covering global economics, politics and U.S. foreign policy from New York; Moran ran CFR.org, the website of the Council on Foreign Relations, Opinion: The war over war with Iran http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/middleeast/100820/iran-war-nuclear-proliferation-israel
Yet U.S. military planners concluded long ago that Irans nuclear program has already developed beyond the point where air strikes could destroy it. At best, air strikes push back the day when Iran attains nuclear capability (whether it actually tests a warhead is another question). During the early days of the Iraq war in 2003, perhaps, such a mission might have successfully set back Irans nuclear weapons program a few years (though destroying it, frankly, would always have required an invasion and a sustained UNSCOM-style inspections regime). Right now, the frustrating UN sanctions route appears the best of a bad set of options. Few claim the air strikes would do longterm damage to Irans program. A recent assessment by James Phillips, a senior defense analyst from the conservative Heritage Foundation, concluded that Israeli air strikes could only buy a little time at this point. Phillips goes on to argue that it would be better for Israel to buy some time now than fight a nuclear war with Iran later as if these are the only two options on the table. But Phillips, like other analysts

of various political leanings, also lays out a series of harrowing consequences from such an attack, including possible chemical and biological counterstrikes by Iranian missiles on Israel, the unleashing of Hezbollah and Hamas against Israeli and U.S. interests, the activation of Iranian agents in Iraq to foil the American withdrawal and, in the darkest scenario, the closing of the Straits of Hormuz and attacks on Saudi oil facilities in effect, precipitation of a global oil crisis like none ever seen. The fact is, in every year subsequent to our misguided Iraq invasion, both the expansion and hardening of Irans program, plus the political atmosphere in the Middle East, has lessened the potential for a successful preemptive air strike against Iranian nuclear facilities. The United States, left to its own devices right now, certainly would not take this route. The stakes in Iraq and the global economy simply are too high. For the United States, the best-case scenario would be for
the conflict to ossify into a standoff reliant on Israeli and U.S. nuclear deterrence. Sanctions would continue to give incentives for Iran to stay away from taking the final, fateful step testing a weapon.

Extinction Kemp 10 - Director of Regional Strategic Programs at The Nixon Center, served in the White House under Ronald Reagan, special assistant to the president for national security affairs and senior director for Near East and South Asian affairs on the National Security Council Staff, Former Director, Middle East Arms Control Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Geoffrey Kemp, The East Moves West: India, China, and Asias Growing Presence in the Middle East, p. 233-4 The second scenario, called Mayhem and Chaos, is the opposite of the first scenario; everything that can go wrong does go wrong. The world economic situation weakens rather than strengthens, and India, China, and Japan suffer a major reduction in their growth rates, further weakening the global economy. As a result, energy demand falls and the price of fossil fuels plummets, leading to a financial crisis for the energy-producing states, which are forced to cut back dramatically on expansion programs and social welfare. That in turn leads to political unrest: and nurtures different radical groups, including, but not limited to, Islamic extremists. The internal stability of some countries is challenged, and there are more failed states. Most serious is the collapse of the democratic government in Pakistan and its takeover by Muslim extremists, who then take possession of a large number of nuclear weapons. The danger of war between India and Pakistan increases significantly. Iran, always worried about an extremist Pakistan, expands and weaponizes its nuclear program. That further enhances nuclear proliferation in the Middle East, with Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Egypt joining Israel and Iran as nuclear states. Under these circumstances, the potential for nuclear terrorism increases, and the possibility of a nuclear terrorist attack in either the Western world or in the oil-

producing states may lead to a further devastating collapse of the world economic market, with a tsunami-like impact on stability. In this scenario, major disruptions can be expected, with dire consequences for two-thirds of the planets population.

Second the alliance leads to bioweapons production in Cuba

Johnson 12 Senior Fellow and Director of the Americas Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (Stephen Johnson,
Irans Influence in the Americas CSIS, March 2012, http://csis.org/files/publication/120312__Johnson_Iran'sInfluence_web.pdf) MR For now, shipping

between Iran, Cuba, and Venezuela could enable Iran to circumvent sanctions on military and technical equipment needed for Irans nuclear or armaments programs. On one hand, Venezuelas $15
billion purchase of Russian arms since 2007 potentially invites an arms race with neighboring Colombia and Brazil. On the other, some of

these arms could end up in Iran or among groups like Hezbollah and Hamas, which Cuba is believed to have aided in the past. Russia could ship arms and military technology directly across the Caspian Sea but as a UN Security Council member is not likely to flout sanctions it helped approve. Discounting Russia as a third party, Cuba-Iran projects that share dual use biotechnology could be used to fabricate pathogens for biological weapons . In the medium term, economic reforms that began in 2011 are not likely to usher in a government less hostile to the west and more cautious with Iran as long as Cubas communist rulers regard their 53-year-old experiment as viable. However, should elections or
health issues result in a new government in Venezuela, the current order and policies in Cuba could also be at risk.

Cuba has the capacity, tech, and motivation to develop bioweapons with Iran
Cereijo 12 Professor at the College of Engineering and Design of Florida International University (Manuel Cereijo, Cuba and Bioweapons:
A Reality? The Americano, March 16 2012, http://theamericano.com/2012/03/16/cuba-bioweapons-reality/) MR

Cuba has also acquired the technology and the capacity to manufacture their own equipment. Some of the
equipment required is very similar to equipment related to diary production, sugar cane processing, and liquor manufacturing, areas where Cuba has had great experience. There

is a definitive and important relation with Iran in the field of biotechnology. Luis Herrera, one of the founders of the CIGB and the biotechnology program in Cuba is directing the Iran/Cuba activities. Some analysts maintain that evidence of biological warfare research is not proof that viable weapons are being produced. However, even the most primitive biological weapons lab can produce enough of an agent to cripple a major city. Certainly, Cubas facilities are recognized as outstanding . Viruses and bacteria can be obtained from
more than two thousand microbe banks around the world. The international scientific community depends on this network for medical research and for exchange of information vital to the fight against disease. There

are very few restrictions on the cross-border trade in pathogens. In the past twenty five years Cuba has been working in the research and development of biotechnological products. Research has proven that viruses and toxins can be genetically altered to heighten their lethality, paving the way for the development of pathogens capable of overcoming existing vaccines. The arsenal of Cuba could include weapons based on tularemia, anthrax, epidemic typhus, smallpox, dengue fever, Marburg, Ebola. It could also extend to neurological agents, based on chemical substances produced naturally in the human body. It is easier to make a biological weapon than to create an effective system of biological defense. The United States plan to stockpile and develop vaccines against known agents is the most
comprehensive of its kind in the world. Vaccines work by inducing the creation of antibodies that fight specific diseases. It is not medically advisable to combine too many different courses of vaccination. There are currently no known vaccines for brucellosis, glanders, and melioidosis, or for many viral diseases, such as Ebola and Marburg. Vaccines

provide excellent protection against specific diseases, but the characteristics that makes them so effective is also the source of their limitations. Smallpox antibodies offer no protection against plague. Combined vaccines are possible, but most of these go straight to the metabolism of specific organisms. An all purpose antidote simply does not exist. Countries with the capacity and technology to produce sophisticated vaccines can certainly produce bioweapons. Cubas biotechnology efforts have been very successful in the creation of vaccines.

Bioweapons cause extinction

Ochs, 2 MA in Natural Resource Management from Rutgers University and Naturalist at Grand Teton National Park (Richard, Biological
Weapons Must be Abolished Immediately, Jun 9, http://www.freefromterror.net/other_articles/abolish.html)

Of all the weapons of mass destruction, the genetically engineered biological extreme danger the great risk these weapons pose just sitting in vials in laboratories. While

weapons, many without a known cure or vaccine, are an

to the continued survival of life on earth. Any perceived military value or deterrence pales in comparison to a "nuclear winter," resulting from a massive exchange of nuclear weapons, could also kill off most of life on earth and severely compromise the health of future generations, they are easier to control. Biological weapons, on the other hand, can get out of control very easily, as the recent anthrax attacks has demonstrated. There is no way to guarantee the security of these doomsday weapons because very tiny amounts can be stolen or accidentally released and then grow or be grown to horrendous proportions. The Black Death of the Middle Ages would be small in comparison to the
potential damage bioweapons could cause. Abolition of chemical weapons is less of a priority because, while they can also kill millions of people outright, their persistence in the environment would be less than nuclear or biological agents or more localized. Hence, chemical weapons would have a lesser effect on future generations of innocent people and the natural environment. Like the Holocaust, once a localized chemical

the killing will probably never end. Radioactive elements last tens of thousands of years and will keep causing cancers virtually forever. Potentially worse than that, bio-engineered agents by the hundreds with no known cure could wreck even greater calamity on the human race than could persistent radiation. AIDS and ebola viruses are just a small example of recently emerging plagues
extermination is over, it is over. With nuclear and biological weapons, with no known cure or vaccine. Can we imagine hundreds of such plagues? HUMAN EXTINCTION IS NOW POSSIBLE. Ironically, the Bush administration has just changed the U.S. nuclear doctrine to allow nuclear retaliation against threats upon allies by conventional weapons. The past doctrine allowed such use only as a last resort when our nations survival was at stake. Will the new policy also allow easier use of US bioweapons? How slippery is this slope? Against this tendency can be posed a rational alternative policy. To

preclude possibilities of human extinction, "patriotism" needs to be redefined to make humanitys survival primary and absolute. Even if we lose our cherished freedom, our sovereignty, our government or our Constitution, where there is life, there is hope.
What good is anything else if humanity is extinguished? This concept should be promoted to the center of national debate.. For example, for sake of argument, suppose the ancient Israelites developed defensive bioweapons of mass destruction when they were enslaved by Egypt. Then suppose these weapons were released by design or accident and wiped everybody out? As bad as slavery is, extinction is worse. Our generation, our century, our epoch needs to take the long view. We truly hold

in our hands the precious gift of all future life. Empires may come and go, but who are the honored custodians of life on earth? Temporal politicians? Corporate competitors? Strategic
brinksmen? Military gamers? Inflated egos dripping with testosterone? How can any sane person believe that national sovereignty is more important than survival of the species? Now that extinction is possible, our slogan should be "Where there is life, there is hope." No government, no economic system, no national pride, no religion, no political system can be placed above human survival. The egos of leaders must not blind us. The adrenaline and vengeance of a fight must not blind us. The game is over. If patriotism would extinguish humanity, then patriotism is the highest of all crimes.

The third impact is nuclear terrorism

Suchlicki 9 Emilio Bacardi Moreau Distinguished Professor and director of the Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies at the
University of Miami (Jaime Suchlicki, The Cuba-Venezuela Challenge to Hemispheric Security: Implications for the United States University of Miami Center for Hemispheric Policy, December 3, 2009, http://www6.miami.edu/hemispheric-policy/VenCubaSecurityChallenges.pdf) MR The concern is not necessarily that Venezuela will build its own nuclear bomb. What, for example, would

stop the Iranians, once they develop their own weapons, from providing some to their close ally in Caracas? Or worse, will the Iranians use Venezuela as a transshipment point to provide nuclear weapons to terrorist groups in the hemisphere or elsewhere. Or with the help of Venezuelans, would the Iranians smuggle a nuclear weapon into the United States. Given Chvezs erratic and irresponsible behavior, these possibilities should not be dismissed lightly . Not too long ago, Fidel Castro
helped the Soviet Union surreptitiously introduce nuclear weapons into Cuba aimed at the United States. The October 1962 missile crisis is a grim reminder that poor U.S. vigilance, a daring leader in the Caribbean and a reckless dictator in Russia almost brought the world to a nuclear holocaust. Since 2004, Iran

has created an extensive network of installations throughout Venezuela. Most of these installations are designed to provide cover for illegal and subversive activities and to aid terrorist organizations in Latin
America and the Middle East.30 The Venezuelan government established a binational Iranian-Venezuelan bank, an alliance between the Banco Industrial de Venezuela and Irans Development and Export Bank, and facilitated the formation of an entirely Iranian-owned bank, the Banco Internacional de Desarrollo. It also created a binational investment and development fund and opened offices in Caracas of Iranian commercial banks.31 The Iranians have acquired industrial installations throughout Venezuelan territory, including a tractor factory in the State of Bolvar, a cement plant in the State of Monagas, a car-assembly plant in the State of Aragua and a bicycle factory in the State of Cojedes. Some of these installations in reality are used primarily as warehouses for the storage of illegal drugs, weapons and other items useful to Iran and its terrorist clients. In addition, the Islamic Republic bought a gold mine in Bolvar that indeed produces gold, but also produces uranium.32 As part of a mineral survey in Guyana this year, U308 Corp., a Canadian uranium exploration company, recorded a substantial source of uranium in the Roraima Basin, which straddles the border between Guyana and Bolvar. Iranian companies and others with Middle Eastern

backgrounds operate mines in this region; at least two of these facilities have their own ports on the navigable Orinoco River, through which uranium and other contraband can be smuggled to the Atlantic. The VenIran tractor factory in Bolvar attracted international scrutiny when Turkish customs inspectors intercepted twenty-two containers bound for the Venezuelan facility on December 28, 2008. Labeled tractor parts, the containers instead carried an explosives lab and nitrate and sulfite chemicals that could be used to manufacture explosives.33

Iran is also providing Venezuela with technical assistance in the areas of defense, intelligence, energy and security. Iranians, as well as Cuban personnel, are advising and protecting Chvez and training his security apparatus. A close relationship between the three countries, with a clear anti-American tone, has developed. This triple alliance represents a clear threat to U.S. security interests and to the security of several countries in Latin America. And, that escalates to nuclear war Robert Ayson, Professor of Strategic Studies and Director of the Centre for Strategic Studies: New Zealand at the Victoria University of Wellington, 2010 (After a Terrorist Nuclear Attack: Envisaging Catalytic Effects,
Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, Volume 33, Issue 7, July, Available Online to Subscribing Institutions via InformaWorld) A terrorist nuclear attack, and even the use of nuclear weapons in response by the country attacked in the first place, would not necessarily represent the worst of the nuclear worlds imaginable. Indeed, there are reasons to wonder whether nuclear terrorism should ever be regarded as belonging in the category of truly existential threats. A contrast can be drawn here with the global catastrophe that would come from a massive nuclear exchange between two or more of the sovereign states that possess these weapons in significant numbers. Even the worst terrorism that the twenty-first century might bring would fade into insignificance alongside considerations of what a general nuclear war would have wrought in the Cold War period. And it must be admitted that as long as the major nuclear weapons states have hundreds and even thousands of nuclear weapons at their disposal, there is always the possibility of a truly awful nuclear exchange taking place precipitated entirely by state possessors themselves. But these two nuclear worldsa non-state actor nuclear attack and a catastrophic interstate nuclear exchangeare not necessarily separable. It is just possible that some

sort of terrorist attack, and especially an act of nuclear terrorism, could precipitate a chain of events leading to a massive exchange of nuclear weapons between two or more of the states that possess them. In this context, todays and tomorrows terrorist groups might assume the
place allotted during the early Cold War years to new state possessors of small nuclear arsenals who were seen as raising the risks of a catalytic nuclear war between the superpowers started by third parties. These risks were considered in the late 1950s and early 1960s as concerns grew about nuclear proliferation, the so-called n+1 problem. It may require a considerable amount of imagination to depict an especially plausible situation where an act of nuclear terrorism could lead to such a massive inter-state nuclear war. For example, in the event of a terrorist nuclear attack on the United States, it might well be wondered just how Russia and/or China could plausibly be brought into the picture, not least because they seem unlikely to be fingered as the most obvious state sponsors or encouragers of terrorist groups. They would seem far too responsible to be involved in supporting that sort of terrorist behavior that could just as easily threaten them as well. Some possibilities, however remote, do suggest themselves. For example, how might the United States react if it was thought or discovered that the fissile material used in the act of nuclear terrorism had come from Russian stocks,40 and if for some reason Moscow denied any responsibility for nuclear laxity? The correct attribution of that nuclear material to a particular country might not be a case of science fiction given the observation by Michael May et al. that while the debris resulting from a nuclear explosion would be spread over a wide area in tiny fragments, its radioactivity makes it detectable, identifiable and collectable, and a wealth of information can be obtained from its analysis: the efficiency of the explosion, the materials used and, most important some indication of where the nuclear material came from.41 Alternatively, if

the act of nuclear terrorism came as a complete surprise, and American officials refused to believe that a terrorist group was fully responsible (or responsible at all) suspicion would shift immediately to state possessors. Ruling out Western ally countries like the United Kingdom and France, and probably Israel and India as well, authorities in Washington would be left with a very short list consisting of North Korea, perhaps Iran if its program continues,and possibly Pakistan. But at what stage would Russia and China be definitely ruled out in this high stakes game of nuclear Cluedo? In particular, if the act of nuclear terrorism occurred against a backdrop of existing tension in Washingtons relations with Russia and/or China, and at a time when threats had already been traded between these major powers, would officials and political leaders not be tempted to assume the worst? Of course, the chances of this occurring would only seem to increase if the United States was already involved in some sort of limited
armed conflict with Russia and/or China, or if they were confronting each other from a distance in a proxy war, as unlikely as these developments may seem at the present time. The reverse might well apply too: should a nuclear terrorist attack occur in Russia or China during a period of heightened tension or even limited conflict with the United States, could Moscow and Beijing resist the pressures that might rise domestically to consider the United States as a possible perpetrator or encourager of the attack? Washingtons

early response to a terrorist nuclear attack on its own soil might also raise the possibility of an unwanted (and nuclear aided) confrontation with Russia and/or China. For example, in the noise and confusion during the immediate aftermath of the terrorist nuclear attack, the U.S. president might be expected to place the countrys armed forces, including its nuclear arsenal, on a higher stage of alert. In such a tense environment, when careful

planning runs up against the friction of reality, it

is just possible that Moscow and/or China might mistakenly read this as a sign of U.S. intentions to use force (and possibly nuclear force) against them. In that situation, the temptations to preempt such actions might grow, although it must be admitted that any preemption would probably still meet with a devastating response. As part of its initial response to the act of nuclear terrorism (as discussed earlier) Washington might decide to order a significant conventional (or nuclear) retaliatory or disarming attack against the leadership of the terrorist group and/or states seen to support that group. Depending on the identity and especially the location of these targets, Russia and/or China might interpret such action as being far too close for their comfort, and potentially as an infringement on their spheres of influence and even on their sovereignty. One far-fetched
but perhaps not impossible scenario might stem from a judgment in Washington that some of the main aiders and abetters of the terrorist action resided somewhere such as Chechnya, perhaps in connection with what Allison claims is the Chechen insurgents long-standing interest in all things nuclear.42 American pressure on that part of the world would almost certainly raise alarms in Moscow that might require a degree of advanced consultation from Washington that the latter found itself unable or unwilling to provide. There is also the question of how other nuclear-armed states respond to the act of nuclear terrorism on another member of that special club. It could reasonably be expected that following a nuclear terrorist attack on the United States, both Russia and China would extend immediate sympathy and support to Washington and would work alongside the United States in the Security Council. But there is just a chance, albeit a slim one, where the support of Russia and/or China is less automatic in some cases than in others. For example, what would happen if the United States wished to discuss its right to retaliate against groups based in their territory? If, for some reason, Washington found the responses of Russia and China deeply underwhelming, (neither for us or against us) might it also suspect that they secretly were in cahoots with the group, increasing (again perhaps ever so slightly) the chances of a major exchange. If the terrorist group had some connections to groups in Russia and China, or existed in areas of the world over which Russia and China held sway, and if Washington felt that Moscow or Beijing were placing a curiously modest level of pressure on them, what conclusions might it then draw about their culpability? If Washington decided to use, or decided to threaten the use of, nuclear weapons, the responses of Russia and China would be crucial to the chances of avoiding a more serious nuclear exchange. They might surmise, for example, that while the act of nuclear terrorism was especially heinous and demanded a strong response, the response simply had to remain below the nuclear threshold. It would be one thing for a non-state actor to have broken the nuclear use taboo, but an entirely different thing for a state actor, and indeed the leading state in the international system, to do so. If Russia and China felt sufficiently strongly about that prospect, there is then the question of what options would lie open to them to dissuade the United States from such action: and as has been seen over the last several decades, the central dissuader of the use of nuclear weapons by states has been the threat of nuclear retaliation. If some readers find this simply too fanciful, and perhaps even offensive to contemplate, it may be informative to reverse the tables. Russia, which possesses an arsenal of thousands of nuclear warheads and that has been one of the two most important trustees of the non-use taboo, is subjected to an attack of nuclear terrorism. In response, Moscow places its nuclear forces very visibly on a higher state of alert and declares that it is considering the use of nuclear retaliation against the group and any of its state supporters. How would Washington view such a possibility? Would it really be keen to support Russias use of nuclear weapons, including outside Russias traditional sphere of influence? And if not, which seems quite plausible, what options would Washington have to communicate that displeasure? If China had been the victim of the nuclear terrorism and seemed likely to retaliate in kind, would the United States and Russia be happy to sit back and let this occur? In the charged atmosphere immediately after a nuclear terrorist attack, how would the attacked country respond to pressure from other major nuclear powers not to respond in kind? The phrase how dare they tell us what to do immediately springs to mind. Some might even go so far as to interpret this concern as a tacit form of sympathy or support for the terrorists. This might not help the chances of nuclear restraint.

Embargo = Cuba-Iran Rels

The embargo intensifies Cuba-Iran relations extreme security threat
Vann 7 Director, Latino and Latin American Institute, American Jewish Committee (Dina Siegel Vann, Irans Presence in Latin America:
Trade, Energy, and Terror Hacer.org, 2007, http://www.hacer.org/pdf/IRAN.pdf) MR

Irans connection with Cuba is not difficult to fathom, given both countries shared agenda against the U.S. Close diplomatic ties date back to 1982, when Cuba became one of the first countries to recognize the 1979 Islamic revolution. During the 1980s and 90s, Fidel Castro aligned Cuban foreign policy in support of Iranian aims and positions in order to continue undermining American initiatives and influence in both Latin America and the Middle East. However, it wasnt until May 2001 that Fidel Castro finally visited the Persian nation, where he was received with the highest honors. The fact that both countries are bound by restricting U.S. embargoes has brought them even closer . Cuba has been Irans unconditional ally in the international arena, defending its inalienable right to access nuclear energy. In a February 2006
vote at the IAEA, Cuba was one of only three countries (along with Venezuela and Syria) to vote against a resolution to report Iran to the UN Security Council because of its nuclear program. Ahmadinejad publicly thanked Cuba for its dignified and principled position during the special meeting. As a sign of his gratitude for Cubas support, Ahmadinejad

accepted an invitation by President Castro to attend the September 2006 Non-Aligned Summit in Havana. The two presidents signed five Memoranda of Understanding (MoU) for cooperation in agriculture and the export of power and electric equipment and services by Iran to Cuba. The summit concluded with a declaration that condemned Israel gave support to Irans nuclear energy plans and denounced the United States foreign policy. Under Ahmadinejad, diplomatic activity between Cuba and Iran has intensified .
Among the senior Cuban officials who have traveled to Tehran are Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque (November 2005; February 2006), National Assembly President Ricardo Alarcon (April 2006) and Government Minister Ricardo Cabrisas Ruiz (April 2006). On the Iranian side, Ahmadinejad visited Havana in September 2006, and the speaker of the Iranian Parliament, Haddad Adel, visited in February of the same year. Additionally, dozens

of ministers, legislators, and business leaders from both countries met in Havana in April

2006 for a joint economic conference, the eleventh to take place between the two nations, signing an economic cooperation agreement that includes provisions for building refineries and oil exploration activities. Iran and Cuba have also been exploring further cooperation in the textile, agriculture, and petrochemical fields. Trade between the two nations increased from $20 million in 2001 to $50 million in 2003.2 Iran imports at least $15 million worth of Cuban pharmaceuticals and biotechnological products per year and ships volumes of Iranian oil to Cuba.3 It is estimated that Tehran-Havana trade will top $50 million in 2007.4 The two nations have successfully transcended a number of ideological

differences in order to join forces and bring America to its

knees .5 Cubas strategic geographical location can prove extremely valuable to Iran in conveying the message that it has allies within striking distance of the U.S. Also, Cuba analysts say that Iran has used an electronic jamming station outside Havana, which the Communist island employs to block broadcasts beamed by the U.S.-backed Radio Marti. Reports say Iran piggybacked on Cubas expertise to jam American government broadcasting in the
country about student pro-democracy demonstrations in July 2003.6

Embargo = Cuba-Venezuela Rels

The Cuban embargo strengthens their dependence on Venezuela security threat to the US
Curtain 8 (Joseph W., ECONOMIC AND SECURITY REASONS WHY THE U.S. SHOULD NORMALIZE RELATIONS WITH CUBA Naval
Postgraduate School, June 2008, http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a483591.pdf) MR Moreover, the U.S. should not see the defeat of Chavezs constitutional reforms as a success because even without a formal Venezuelan-Cuban confederation, Cuba

has already become in many ways very dependent on Venezuela. As Corrales points out, Chavez has created a dynamic whereby Cuba has become increasingly more dependent on Venezuela. Cubas financial debt to Venezuela is currently more than $2.5 billion and rising. And as Chavezs petro-rich Venezuela accepts more and more long term IOUs from the Castro regime, Castros Cuba becomes more and more dependent on Chavezs Venezuela. 93 And with that dependence, Chavez gains ever more leverage over Cubas future. What does the embargo have to do with it? The short answer everything . Cuban dependence on Venezuela and Venezuelas subsequent leverage over Cuba are aided and abetted by the U.S.Cuban embargo. Due to the embargos trade restrictions, Venezuela has in effect replaced the role the U.S. would have played in a post-Soviet Union globalized Cuban economy.
Certainly Chavez is best known for his incessant and irreverent anti-imperialist rhetoric which makes him, at times, hard to take seriously. However a

close look at his actions reveals what seems to be a deliberate plan to pose a significant threat to the U.S. A quick run down of the facts are as follows: Chavez has recently spent $5 billion to create the strongest military in Latin America, Venezuela is one of Cubas top creditors, Cubas debt to Venezuela is $2.5 billion and rising, and the Cuban military is helping complete Chavezs transformation of the Venezuelan military. Add the facts to the Cuba-and-Venezuela-are-one-nation rhetoric, the Venezuela needs a robust military to defend itself from the U.S. rhetoric, the Venezuela should be able to pursue peaceful nuclear weapons rhetoric and the narrow defeat of the constitutional reforms that would have made Chavez possibly an indefinite president of a Cuba and Venezuela confederation and the implications to U.S. security should be quite obvious .

The embargo has failed only ending it now prevents the Iran-Venezuela threat from escalating
Curtain 8 (Joseph W., ECONOMIC AND SECURITY REASONS WHY THE U.S. SHOULD NORMALIZE RELATIONS WITH CUBA Naval
Postgraduate School, June 2008, http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a483591.pdf) MR Cubas economy has not only survived the end of Soviet-era subsidies but has thrived in the era of globalization. This thesis documents the adjustments the Cuban government has made to the economy and the increase in foreign direct investment (FDI) that has occurred as a result.

The prospect of the U.S.s Cuban trade embargo actually accomplishing its goal seems to diminish more and more with the every dollar of FDI invested in Cuba. The thesis also shows how China, Venezuela and Iran continue to invest more money in the island and subsequently threaten to wield more influence over Cuba. The U.S. has the opportunity to mitigate the threats posed by Venezuela and Iran vis--vis Cuba. However, the policy
espoused by current policy makers is logically flawed. The Helms-Burton Act contains unrealistic benchmarks that provide little incentive for Cuban leaders to liberalize. Senator McCain espouses a position little different from President Bushs hard-line implementation of HelmsBurton, an approach that has failed to produce change. Senator Obama advocates liberalization within the context of Helms-Burton, an approach already tried by President Clinton without producing significant change. In contrast, this thesis argues that the

normalization of relations with Cuba can diminish the influence Iran and Venezuela have on Cuba and keep potential threats from coming ninety miles off the coast of the U.S. The next president should call for Congress to repeal the Helms-Burton Act so that executive discretion can be exercised with respect to Cuban foreign policy.

Impact Jamming
Strengthening Cuba-Venezuela ties accelerates the development of electromagnetic weapons US will be targeted
Suchlicki 9 Emilio Bacardi Moreau Distinguished Professor and director of the Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies at the
University of Miami (Jaime Suchlicki, The Cuba-Venezuela Challenge to Hemispheric Security: Implications for the United States University of Miami Center for Hemispheric Policy, December 3, 2009, http://www6.miami.edu/hemispheric-policy/VenCubaSecurityChallenges.pdf) MR Geographically, Cuba's

strategic location enabled Iran, on at least one occasion, to clandestinely engage in electronic attacks against U.S. telecommunications that posed a threat to the Islamic regime's control and censorship. In the summer of 2003, Tehran blocked signals from a U.S. satellite broadcasting uncensored Farsi-language news into Iran at a
time of rising unrest. Based on the location of the satellite over the Atlantic, it would have been impossible for Iranian-based transmissions to affect the satellite's signals. Ultimately, the jamming was traced to a compound in the outskirts of Havana that had been equipped with the advanced telecommunications technology capable of disrupting the Los Angeles-based broadcaster's programming across the Atlantic. It is well known that Cuba

has continuously upgraded its ability to block U.S. broadcasts to the island, and hence conceivably, to jam international communications in general. Although the Cuban government would later claim
that Iranian diplomatic staff had operated out of the compound without its consent, given that Cuba "[is] a fully police state," as an Iran expert has noted, "it

is difficult to believe the Iranians had introduced the sophisticated jamming equipment into Cuba less utilized it against U.S. targets without the knowledge of the Castro regime.13 For its solidarity with, and services to, the Islamic Republic, Iran began compensating the Cuban government directly.
without the knowledge of the Cuban authorities," much During the presidency of Mohammad Khatami (1997-2005), Tehran offered Havana an initial 20 million euros annual credit line.14 Then following the election of current Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2005, the island has emerged as a major beneficiary of Tehran's foreign policy. Consequently, Iranian financing for Cuba expanded exponentially from a modest 20 million euros in 2005 to 200 million euros for bilateral trade and investment projects in 2007.15 At the same time, Havana was spearheading a campaign within the Non-Aligned Movement to legitimize Iran's "peaceful" nuclear program as an "inalienable right" of all developing nations.16 In June 2008, Ahmadinejad approved a record 500 million euros credit for the Castro regime. From Iran's perspective, Cuba deserves to be rewarded for its "similarity in outlooks on international issues."17 In total, since 2005, Cuba has received the equivalent of over one billion dollars in credits from Tehran. With Islamic Republic financing, Cuba has begun to make critical investments in the rehabilitation of dilapidated Soviet-era infrastructure. Iran is funding some 60 projects ranging from the acquisition of 750 Iranian-made rail cars to the construction of power plants, dams and highways.18 Access to Iranian credit has, in turn, driven annual bilateral trade from less than US$20 million in 2001 to US$327 million in 2007 and has led to the founding in May 2008 of a secure Tehran-Havana-Caracas shipping line connecting Iran to Venezuela via Cuba. In the view of Iran's finance minister, the investment in the joint Cuban-Iranian maritime freight venture benefits "[the three countries'] important business ties."19 Moreover, with

Havana as a growing financial and logistics center for Islamic interests in the region, the new line "may contribute to the expansion of trade between Iran and other Latin American nations."20 Reports also have uncovered covert cooperation between the two countries in the development and testing of electromagnetic weapons that have the capacity to disrupt telecom munication networks, cut power supplies and damage sophisticated computers .21

Bioweapons Impact
Bioterror is possible, probable and worse than nuclear war
Maurer 07 Stephen M. Maurer, J.D. Director of the Goldman School Project at the University of California, Berkeley on Information
Technology and Homeland Security LIFEBOAT FOUNDATION BIOSHIELD HTTP://LIFEBOAT.COM/EX/BIO.SHIELD 2007

The new realities of terrorism and suicide bombers pull us one step further. How would we react to the devastation caused by a virus or bacterium or other pathogen unleashed not by the forces of nature, but intentionally by man? No intelligence agency, no matter how astute, and no military, no matter how powerful and dedicated, can assure that a small terrorist group using readily available equipment in a small and apparently innocuous setting cannot mount a first-order biological attack. With the rapid advancements in technology, we are rapidly moving from having to worry about state-based biological programs to smaller terrorist-based biological programs. It's possible today to synthesize virulent pathogens from scratch, or to engineer and manufacture prions that, introduced undetectably over time into a nation's food supply, would after a long delay afflict millions with a terrible and often fatal disease. It's a new world. Though not as initially dramatic as a nuclear blast, biological warfare is potentially far more destructive than the kind of nuclear attack feasible at the operational level of the terrorist. And biological war is itself distressingly easy to wage. It would be more cost effective if those
funding the BioShield set specific goals and gave prize money to the people/organizations that accomplished them than simply funding research without such goals. We propose that we take the measure of this threat and make preparations today to engage it with the force and knowledge adequate to throw it back wherever and however it may strike. It is time to accelerate the development of antiviral and antibacterial technology for the human population. The way to combat this serious and ever-growing threat is to develop broad tools to destroy viruses and bacteria. We have tools such as those based on RNA interference that can block gene expression. We can now sequence the genes of a new virus in a matter of days, so our goal is within reach! We call for the creation of new technologies and the enhancement of existing technologies to increase our abilities to detect, identify, and model any emerging or newly identified infective agent, present or future, natural or otherwise we need to accelerate the expansion of our capacity to engineer vaccines for immunization, and explore the feasibility of other medicinals to cure or circumvent infections, and to manufacture, distribute, and administer what we need in a timely and effective manner that protects us all from the threat of bioengineered malevolent viruses and microbial organisms.

Time is running out.

Timeframe is this year

Katel 09 former TIME journalist, frmr writer for World Bank, won the Interamerican Press Associations Bartolome Mitre
Award (Peter Katel Homeland Security: Is America safe from terrorism today? CQ Researcher, 2/13/09, http://library.cqpress.com/cqresearcher/document.php?id=cqresrre2009021300)//KY Independently, a congressional panel announced in late 2008 that trouble looms. Unless the world community acts decisively an d with great urgency. It is more likely than not that a weapon of mass destruction will be used in a

terrorist attack somewhere in the world by the end of 2013, said the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism. The Commission further trained biologists are relatively numerous. Terrorists are trying to upgrade their capabilities and could do so by recruiting skilled scientists, the commission said. Meanwhile, the Government Accountability
Office (GAO) reported in late 2008 that security is sub-par at two of the five U.S. laboratories authorized to handle deadly pathogens, the WMD commission said. The two insecure facilities were at Georgia State University in Atlanta and the Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research in San Antonio, Texas.

believes that terrorists are more likely to be able to obtain and use a biological weapon than a nuclear weapon. While the commisison conceded that highly specialized knowledge and equipment would be indispensable to mount a bio attack, it noted that

US-Cuban Relations

US-Cuba Relations 1AC

Chavez death has made Cuba more open to US involvement than ever
Gomez 13 assistant professor in the Department of Public Policy & Administration at Rutgers University (Eduardo J. Gomez,
Ahmadinejad's hug and the future of Chavez's alliance CNN, March 13 2013, http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/13/opinion/gmez-chavezahmadinejad-america) MR

Chvez's death is certainly changing the political calculus in Venezuela, but will it also result in a broader shift that could realign much of Latin America and affect attitudes toward, and relationships with, the United States? The answer is likely "yes." First, the grouping of nations previously opposing the United States under Chvez's leftist alliance -- namely the "Alba" alliance, comprised of Venezuela, Cuba, Ecuador, Nicaragua, and Bolivia -- could well wither away, due to Venezuela's ongoing recession and fears that alliance members will no longer have Venezuela's financial backing. When combined with reports of Chvez's expressed desire to strengthen ties with the Obama administration, regional hostility towards the United States may decline. Since assuming office in 1999, Chvez viewed Washington as an oppressive force manipulating Latin American
politics while keeping the region underdeveloped through its dependence on U.S. resources. In response, Chvez approached like-minded leaders to build a coalition challenging the regional influence of the United States. By 2005, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Cuba, Honduras and Ecuador joined Chvez's coalition, which led to the formation of the Bolivian Alliance of the Americas, also known as Alba. Alba served as an alternative to the Free Trade Act of the Americas, with an explicit focus on poverty reduction, but it also facilitated the unification of these nations in their anti-American sentiments . With Chvez gone, however, there may be no one left who has the clout to keep financing this alliance. Venezuela is Alba's largest financier, contributing millions in aid to its members as well as oil at low prices. But Venezuelans may believe

that with ongoing poverty and inequality, their country's needs are more important than those of Chvez's small club of nations. This situation worries Alba members. According to Cynthia Arnson of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, while Bolivia and Ecuador are independently wealthy and not financially dependent on Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua are. Cuba receives roughly 100,000 barrels of Venezuelan oil a day, while Venezuela accounted for $8.3 billion of Cuba's $20 billion in foreign trade in 2011. Chvez also paid approximately $6 billion annually for 40,000 Cuban doctors and nurses, according to Reuters. Cuban citizens fear that Chvez's death will push them back to the days of the post-Cold War recession, when Russia gradually withdrew its funding for Cuba. Meanwhile, Nicaragua has received approximately $500 million a year in
loans and oil credits, increasing to $609 million in 2011, while earnings from agricultural exports to Venezuela increased from $2 million in 2006 to $300 million in 2011. But alliance members also realize that they have options. Nicaragua's economic minister, Bayardo Arce, recently stated that it's time to diversify Nicaragua's economic relations with China, Europe and the United States, mainly because Nicaragua has "to anticipate that Alba is not going to be permanent." Cuba may also seek to strengthen its relations with Brazil, its second-largest trade partner in the region. In fact, both governments already have plans to engage in several trade and infrastructure projects and are ramping up trade, mainly in sugar exports. Ecuador and Nicaragua are working more closely with Brazil in helping to construct hydroelectric energy plants and chemical industries, respectively. In addition to strong economic growth rates, Brazilian President Dilma Rouseff's policy commitments to the poor and enhanced control over key economic sectors, such as oil, may provide a more appealing leftist model. In recent years, Chvez was also interested in improving relations with the United States. He saw President Obama's re-election victory as an opportunity to strengthen diplomatic ties. Chvez once commented: "I wish we could begin a new period of normal relations." Chvez was so committed to this endeavor that even from his hospital in Cuba, he authorized his second in command, Vice President Nicolas Maduro, to start negotiating with the U.S. State Department. While it may seem that Maduro may have a difficult time working with the United States, considering his accusations that the United States has historically plotted against Venezuela and the recent removal of U.S. diplomats from Caracas, it appears that this was mainly done to gain the trust of Chvez political supporters in order to secure Maduro's position as the next president. U.S. diplomatic officials view Maduro as a pragmatist and the fact that he was supportive of initiating closer ties with the United States last year suggests that this could continue, especially in light of Venezuela's economic troubles and the need to increase revenues through trade. Chvez's passing should motivate the United States to seek a new partnership with Venezuela. First, Secretary of State John Kerry should reopen the U.S. embassy in Caracas, which has been closed since 2010, while assigning diplomats who are committed to engaging in peaceful dialogue and political and economic cooperation. Second, Kerry should take this opportunity to strengthen cooperation over issues that can provide mutual benefits in the areas of national security and the economy, such as counternarcotics, counterterrorism, as well as sustaining oil trade: the United States currently imports just under 1 million barrels a day from Venezuela. But the

United States should also see this situation as an opportunity to strengthen its ties with other nations, such as Cuba. With the likely decline in economic assistance to Cuba from Venezuela, Cuban President Raul Castro may consider stepping up negotiations with the Obama administration over the U.S. embargo, human rights and the release of American prisoners, such as Alan Gross. Chvez is gone, but the United States' commitment to peaceful democratic relations persists. Going forward, the United States should explore ways of strengthening its ties with Venezuela and other Latin American nations.

US engagement with Cuba is key to relations

Piccone 13 - senior fellow and deputy director for Foreign Policy at the Brookings Institution (Ted Piccone, Time to Bet on Cuba,
Brookings, March 18 2013, http://www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2013/03/18-cuba-piccone) MR These new

circumstances offer President Obama a rare opportunity to turn the page of history from an outdated a new era of constructive engagement. In his second term in office, he should place a big bet by investing political capital in defrosting relations, an approach that will advance U.S. interests in a stable, prosperous and democratic Cuba. Under Castro, the Cuban government has undertaken important reforms to modernize and liberalize the economy. Cubans are now permitted to buy and sell property, open their own businesses, hire employees and enter into co-ops, with state-owned enterprises on a more equal footing. The updating of the Soviet-style economic system is a gradual and highly controlled process. But the recent legal emergence of formal, small-scale private businesses (cuentapropistas) that can now compete on a more equal footing with state-owned enterprises opens a window into a profound shift in thinking already under way on the island. The reforms also offer new opportunities for U.S. engagement.
Cold War approach to Cuba to

Squo Doesnt Solve

USAID fails to solve Cuban relations
Laverty, 11 Collin Laverty is a Cuba consultant at the Center for Democracy in the Americas. He has performed extensive research on
developments in the region over the years. he completed a Masters degree at the Institute for International Relations and Pacific Studies, where he was a FLAS fellow and managing director of the International Policy Solutions Journal. (Collin Laverty, 2011, Cubas Resolve: Economic Reform and Its implications for US Policy, Center for Democracy in the Americas, http://democracyinamericas.org/pdfs/CDA_Cubas_New_Resolve.pdf) KD

U.S. government has spent more than $150 million on antiregime activities in Cuba, including support for Cuban dissidents, through USAID. Investigations by Congress and the U.S. Government Accountability Office document widespread waste, fraud, and abuse in these programs.76 Cubans who receive funds or support are subject to great risk, as are American employees of the program, sadly demonstrated by the case of imprisoned U.S. subcontractor, Alan Gross. Aside from being wasteful, ineffective and dangerous to those involved in it, the USAID program actually heightens tensions and limits space for debate. It allows the Cuban government to label dissident thinkers as employees and pawns of the U.S. government, and increases fear among mainstream economists, politicians and everyday citizens who advocate
Under authority granted

by the Helms-Burton Act, the

positions similar to those of activists associated with the U.S. Interests Section or otherwise funded by Washington.

Now K/ Relations
Now is the time to transform US Cuba relations its now or never
Stephens and Dunscomb 9 Stephens is the executive director of The Center for Democracy in the Americas, Dunscomb is a
consultant at The Center for Democracy in the Americas. For eight years, she worked as research director and then segment producer for the McLaughlin Group (Sara Stephens and Alice Dunscomb, 9 Ways for US to Talk to Cuba and for Cuba to Talk to US, 2009, The center for democracy in the Americas, http://www.scribd.com/doc/10323598/9-Ways-for-US-to-Talk-to-Cuba-and-for-Cuba-to-Talk-to-US#download, JL)
For a variety of reasons, the U.S.-Cuba

relationship appears to havearrived at a strategic inflection point. A strategic a chance to rethink theneeds of the moment and the demands of the future. They comeinfrequently and once gone cannot be recaptured . The time for America to re-aim its goal, strategy, and policies toward Cuba is now.The last such opportunity came when the Soviet Union left Cuba but the U.S. chose not to take advantage of that moment. There is no way to predict when the next opportunity will come.The Obama administration enters office unburdened by the bag-gage of history. President Obama speaks eloquently to Americans of balanced principle and pragmatism. His election owes no debt to thehard-core anti-Castro Cuban community that has driven so much of U.S. policy in the past a community that is undergoing its owndemographic changes, with a younger generation who have differentattitudes toward what is possible and even desirable in terms of U.S.policy toward Cuba.On Cubas side of the equation, there is considerable evidence of evolved thinking. Cuba is saddled with a
inflection point is thetime when companies or countries have twin dilemma: a rapidly graying group more than sixty years old represents a big demographicslice of the population more than 20 percent and places moredemands on the countrys social and economic system. At the sametime, young people make increasingly loud and public call s for a bet-ter quality of life.

Generational change is bringing new demands andnew perspectives. Younger Cubans have a different outlook as to what constitutes the good life.To respond to these competing demands, Ral Castro, sinceassuming power as Cubas president, has given a succession of speeches calling for structural changes in the Cuban economy toincrease efficiency and production, and has taken steps to make thegovernment smaller and more efficient.Agricultural reforms have been instituted to increase
domestic pro-duction and begin the process of substituting imported foodstuffs forCuban agricultural products. In 2008, Ral Castro announced bothagricultural reforms and the relaxation of regulations on the importa-tion of DVD players, VCRs, game consoles, auto parts, and TVs. 15 None of this constitutes a dramatic repudiation of the past or eventhe promise of dramatic political and economic change; the govern-ment of Ral Castro is firmly in control of the work and lives of theCuban people.However, this fifty-year

cycle may have run its course. Each coun-try has its own singular goal and strategy, but at this defining moment,as the context changes, we need to ask, how will those strategieschange as well?Change within Cuba will certainly come within the existing sys-tem. 16 The United States therefore needs to adopt a strategy and poli-cies that amplify and support the change within Cuba toward greaterfreedom and respect for human rights, and that serve and supportlarger American economic and political interests. To do that thoroughly, coherently, and correctly will require theU.S. to untangle an incoherent thicket of legal and regulatory sanc-tions that do not fit the current context and do not serve U.S. interests.Because much of the current intellectual and political mess has beenenacted by the Congress into law, it will take corrective action by theCongress to fix it, action that should start by repealing the ban onlegal travel to Cuba by all Americans.

US Credibility

1AC
The failed embargo kills US credibilitylooks inhumane, costly and utterly useless
Charbonneau 12 Reuters' United Nations bureau chief based in New York (Louis, U.N. urges end to U.S. Cuba embargo for 21st year,
Reuters, 11/13/12, http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/11/13/us-cuba-embargo-un-idUSBRE8AC11820121113)//Bwang (Reuters) - Repeating an annual ritual, the

U.N. General Assembly called on Tuesday for the United States to lift its trade embargo against Cuba, whose foreign minister said the blockade against the communist-run island was tantamount to "genocide." For the 21st year, the assembly's vote was overwhelming, with 188 nations - including most of Washington's closest allies - supporting the embargo resolution, a result virtually unchanged from last year. Israel, heavily dependent on U.S. backing in the Middle East, and the tiny Pacific state of Palau were the only two countries that
supported the United States in opposing the non-binding resolution in the 193-nation assembly. The Pacific states of the Marshall Islands and Micronesia abstained. President Barack Obama further loosened curbs last year on U.S. travel and remittances to Cuba. He had said he was ready to change Cuba policy but was still waiting for signals from Havana, such as the release of political prisoners and guarantees of basic human rights. But Obama has not lifted the five-decade-old trade embargo, and the imprisonment of a U.S. contractor in Cuba has halted the thaw in Cuban-U.S. relations. Havana's Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez told the assembly that Cuba had high hopes for Obama when he was first elected in 2008 and welcomed his calls for change. But he said the result had been disappointing. "The

reality is that the last four years have been characterized by the persistent tightening of ... the embargo," he said. 'EXTERNAL SCAPEGOAT' Rodriguez said the "extraterritoriality" of the blockade measures - the fact that Washington pressures other countries to adhere to the U.S. embargo - violates international law. He added that the blockade is not in U.S. interests and harms its credibility. "It leads the U.S. to adopt costly double standards," he said, adding that the embargo has failed to achieve its objectives of pressuring the government to introduce economic and political freedoms and comply with international human rights standards. "There is no legitimate or moral reason to maintain this embargo that is anchored in the Cold War," he said. He said it qualified as a "act of genocide" against Cuba and was a "massive, flagrant and systematic violation of the human rights of an entire people." U.S. envoy Ronald Godard rejected the resolution's call for ending the blockade and Cuba's allegation that the United States was to blame for Cuban financial difficulties. He added that the
government in Havana was putting the brakes on Cuba's further development, not the United States. "It is the Cuban government that continues to deprive them of that aspiration," he said, adding that Cuba was seeking an "external scapegoat for the island's economic problems."

Specifically, Normalizing relations with Cuba reverses negative perceptions throughout Latin America
Sweig and Bustamante, 13 Nelson and David Rockefeller Senior Fellow for Latin America Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations
and the author of Cuba: What Everyone Needs to Know; a Ph.D. candidate in Latin American history at Yale University (Julia E. Sweig and Michael J. Bustamante, July/August 2013, Foreign Affairs, Cuba After Communism, http://web.ebscohost.com.proxy.lib.umich.edu/ehost/detail?vid=3&sid=2d854e83-f586-49a7-ac8dfdfa99a5a7a2%40sessionmgr110&hid=117&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=ofs&AN=88213870) KD

The geopolitical context in Latin America provides another reason the U.S. government should make a serious shift on Cuba. For five years now, Obama has ignored Latin America's unanimous disapproval of Washington's position on Cuba. Rather than perpetuate Havana's diplomatic isolation, U.S. policy embodies the imperial pretensions of a bygone era, contributing to Washington's own marginalization. Virtually all countries in the region have refused to attend another Summit of the Americas meeting if Cuba is not at the table. Cuba, in turn, currently chairs the
new Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, which excludes Washington. The Obama administration has begun laying out what could become a serious second-term agenda for Latin America focused on energy, jobs, social inclusion, and deepening integration in the Americas. But the

symbolism of Cuba across the region is such that the White House can definitively lead U.S. -- Latin American relations out of the Cold War and into the twenty-first century only by shifting its Cuba policy. To make such a shift, however, Washington must move past its assumption that Havana prefers an

adversarial relationship with the United States. Ral Castro has shown that he is not his brother and has availed himself of numerous
channels, public and private, to communicate to Washington that he is ready to talk. This does not mean that he or his successors are prepared to compromise on Cuba's internal politics; indeed, what Castro is willing to put on the table remains unclear. But his government's decisions to release more than 120 political prisoners in 2010 and 2011 and allow a number of dissident bloggers and activists to travel abroad this year were presumably meant to help set the stage for potential talks with the United States. Meanwhile, the

death of Hugo Chvez, the made it clear that Havana has reasons of its own to chart a path forward with the United States. In the last decade or so, Cuba came to depend on Venezuela for large supplies of subsidized oil, in exchange for a sizable brigade of Cuban doctors staffing the Chvez government's social programs. Political uncertainty in Caracas offers a potent reminder of the hazards of relying too heavily on any one partner. Havana is already beginning to branch out. In addition to financing the refurbishing of
former Venezuelan president, and the narrow margin in the election of his successor, Nicols Maduro, have Mariel Harbor, the Brazilians have extended a line of credit to renovate and expand five airports across the island and have recently signed a deal to hire 6,000 Cuban doctors to fill shortages in Brazil's rural health coverage. Even so, in

the long run, the United States

remains a vital natural market for Cuban products and services Latin America instability empowers Brazilian hardliners Millett 02 PhD, Senior Fellow at the North-South Center, Oppenheimer Chair of Modern Warfighting Strategy at the U.S. Marine Corps
University, Professor Emeritus of History at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville (Richard L. Millet Oct. 2002 Strategic Studies Institute, Colombia's Conflicts: The Spillover Effects of a Wider War) //KY While the

spillover of Colombias conflicts has exacerbated the problems of the region significantly and has reduced the resources available to confront mounting political and economic dilemmas, it is by no means the
principal cause of these problems. The economies and/or the political leadership of every one of Colombias neighbors are in jeopardy. In part, this stems from global economic problems further fueled by volatile commodity prices, the U.S. recession and the Argentine economic collapse, declines in investor confidence, and the difficulties of adjusting to a globalized economy. Even more, it reflects the failure of political leadership, dogged by traditions of corruption and divisive politics. In Ecuador and Brazil,

no party can count on a majority in Congress,

and high levels of uncertainty cloud upcoming presidential elections. The governments in Peru and Panama must deal with the heritage of past corruption, with a growing perception of them as weak and 28 incompetent, and with steadily declining levels of popular support. In Venezuela, President Chavez came to power largely because of a massive public rejection of the traditional political class, but he has become a symbol of divisiveness instead of unity, facing the constant threat of ouster by constitutional or by unconstitutional means. This

mix of political and economic crisis provides the fertile ground in which the alliance of political and criminal violence thrives. It undermines efforts to stabilize democracy and install anything approaching the rule of law. An August 2002 poll showed this trend widespread throughout Latin America. Citizens increasingly blamed the political class for their problems and half said they wouldnt mind if an authoritarian government came to power. Support for free market economics also showed a sharp decline.98 Venezuelas political crisis is the ultimate wild card in efforts
to promote any regional response to Colombias conflicts. Until that is resolved, finding any common agenda will be nearly im possible.

Brazils regional power ambitions, combined with its suspicions of any outside involvement in the Amazon Basin, the traditional enmity between Peru and Ecuador and between Venezuela and Colombia, and the extreme weakness of the Panamanian security apparatus, are also obstacles which will be difficult to overcome. Brazil hardliner takeover causes nuclear war Schulz, 2k Ph.D., Chair of Political Science at Cleveland State U., fmr. Research Professor of National Security at the Strategic Studies
Institute of the US Army College, (Donald E. Schulz, March 2k. Strategic Studies Institute, The United States and Latin America: Shaping an Elusive Future) //KY Until recently, the primary U.S. concern about Brazil has been that it might acquire nuclear weapons and delivery systems. In the 1970s, the Brazilian military embarked on a secret program to develop an atom bomb. By the late 1980s, both Brazil and Argentina were aggressively pursuing nuclear development programs that had clear military spin-offs.54 There were powerful military and civilian advocates of developing nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles within both countries. Today, however, the situation has changed. As a result of political leadership transitions in both countries, Brazil and Argentina now appear firmly committed to restricting their nuclear programs to peaceful purposes. They have entered into various nuclear-related agreements with each othermost notably the quadripartite comprehensive safeguards agreement (1991), which permits the inspection of all their nuclear installations by the International Atomic Energy 26 Agencyand have joined the Missile Technology Control Regime. Even so, no one can be certain about the future. As Scott Tollefson has observed: . . .

the military application of Brazils nuclear and space programs depends less on technological considerations than on political will. While technological constraints present a formidable barrier to achieving nuclear bombs and ballistic missiles, that barrier is
not insurmountable. The critical element, therefore, in determining the applications of Brazils nuclear and space technologies will be primarily

political.55 Put simply,

if changes in political leadership were instrumental in redirecting Brazils nuclear program towards peaceful purposes, future political upheavals could still produce a reversion to previous orientations. Civilian supremacy is not so strong that it could not be swept away by a coup, especially if the legitimacy of the current democratic experiment were to be undermined by economic crisis and growing poverty/inequality. Nor are civilian leaders necessarily less militaristic or more committed to democracy than the military. The example of Perus Fujimori comes immediately to
mind. How serious a threat might Brazil potentially be? It has been estimated that if the nuclear plant at Angra dos Reis (Angra I) were only producing at 30 percent capacity, it could produce five 20-kiloton weapons a year. If production from other plants were included, Brazil would have a capability three times greater than India or Pakistan. Furthermore,

its defense industry already has a substantial missile producing capability. On the other hand, the country has a very limited capacity to project its military power via air and sealift
or to sustain its forces over long distances. And though a 1983 law authorizes significant military manpower increases (which could place Brazil at a numerical level slightly higher than France, Iran and Pakistan), such growth will be restricted by a lack of economic resources. Indeed, the development of all these military potentials has been, and will continue to be, 27 severely constrained by a lack of money. (Which is one reason Brazil decided to engage in arms control with Argentina in the first place.) 56 In short, a

restoration of Brazilian militarism, imbued with nationalistic ambitions for great power status, is not unthinkable, and such a regime could present some fairly serious problems. That government would probably need foreign as well as domestic enemies to help justify its existence. One obvious candidate would be the United States, which would presumably be critical of any return to dictatorial rule. Beyond this, moreover, the spectre of a predatory international community, covetous of the riches of the Amazon, could help rally political support to the regime. For
years, some Brazilian military officers have been warning of foreign intervention. Indeed, as far back as 1991 General Antenor de Santa Cruz Abreu, then chief of the Military Command of the Amazon, threatened to transform the region into a new Vietnam if developed countries tried to internationalize the Amazon. Subsequently, in 1993, U.S.-Guyanese combined military exercises near the Brazilian border provoked an angry response from many high-ranking Brazilian officers. 57

Specifically, Summits are on the brink of collapse only lifting the embargo and allowing Cuban participation reverses current trends
Bajak and Sequera 12 (Frank Bajak and Vivian Sequera, Summit Of The Americas: Cuba Absence Causes Tension Between US And Latin
America Leaders Huffington Post, April 15 2012, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/15/summit-of-the-americas-2012cuba_n_1427115.html) MR Though physically absent, Cuba

cast a big shadow over this Caribbean port at a summit of 30 Western Hemisphere leaders that ended Sunday. Leftist Latin American leaders repeatedly harangued the United States for continuing to insist that the communist-run nation be barred from the 18-year-old Summit of the Americas circuit. Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua were unequivocal : They won't come to the next summit, set for Panama in 2015, if Cuba can't come, too. Ecuador's president, Rafael Correa, boycotted this summit over the issue. "There is no declaration
because there is no consensus," Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos announced at the closing news conference. He said he hoped that Cuba will attend the next one. The

United States and Canada were alone in opposing Cuban participation, and they also refused to endorse in a final declaration on Argentina's claim to the British-held Falkland Islands. President Evo Morales of Bolivia said the United States was acting "like a dictatorship." But Sunday's outcome doesn't necessarily mean the Sixth Summit of the
Americas was the last. "We have four more years to incorporate Cuba," said Argentina's foreign minister, Hector Timerman. His Brazilian counterpart, Antonio Patriota, said such summits are "valuable opportunities that should be repeated." Nearly all the leaders left Cartagena quickly Sunday, allowing U.S. President Barack Obama and his Colombian host to get down to some business of their own. They announced implementation next month of a free trade agreement that Obama said would increase U.S. imports by $1 billion a year and that Santos said would create 500,000 jobs. U.S. and Colombian labor leaders contend the accord lacks adequate mechanisms to halt killings that make this Andean nation the world's most dangerous for trade union activists. As another sign of strengthening ties, Obama and Santos said Colombians would now be able to obtain visas to the United States that will be valid for 10 years, doubling the previous limit. In addition to Correa, President Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua also sat out the weekend meeting, though he offered no explanation. Venezuela's cancer-stricken President Hugo Chavez also was absent. He flew Saturday night to Cuba, where he has been undergoing radiation therapy. The

United States has a half-century-old economic embargo on Cuba and says the island doesn't meet the summit's democratic standards.

The OAS is key to enforce arms control

Herz 8 Director, Institute of International Relations, Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (Monica Herz, DOES THE ORGANISATION OF
AMERICAN STATES MATTER? Institute of International Relations, April 2008, WP34.2.pdf) MR

The idea of arms control is not explicitly present in the Charter, but slowly entered the inter- American security environment in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In 1974, eight Latin American governments issued the Ayacuchu Declaration,19 affirming
their support for the idea of arms control, and the Hemispheric Security Committee has taken on this subject. The Inter-American Convention against the Illicit Production and Traffic of Arms, Ammunition, Explosives and related Materials of 1997 expresses the link between the arms control agenda and the new prominence of the concept of cooperative security. On June 7, 1999, the OAS

General Assembly in Guatemala adopted a landmark Inter-American Convention on Transparency in Conventional Weapons Acquisitions. By June 2003, the Convention was signed by twenty OAS member states all major hemispheric conventional
weapons importers and exporters. The Contadora group mentioned earlier, the Ayacucho Declaration, the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in Latin America and the Caribbean, and the treaties that ended the nuclear dispute between Argentina and Brazil introduced the CSBM agenda, launched at the 1975 Helsinki Conference, to Latin America (Rodrigues 1999; Rojas 1996). The 1995 war between Peru and Ecuador reminded Latin American leaders that the pending

territorial disputes in the region, a legacy of the nineteenth century demarcation process, could be ignited into an actual exchange of fire . The US government, moving in the 1990s towards a more multilateral approach in the region, and the democratisation of Latin American countries permitted the introduction of the confidence-building agenda. In addition, the concern with the nature of civil-military relations in Latin America, given the regions history of military intervention in public administration, and the search for new roles and identities for the military led local elites to acquire greater interest in the subject. In the 1990s the states in the hemisphere turned to the OAS as a catalyst for confidence building. The OAS has organised and sponsored conferences on confidence- and security-building measures, designed to strengthen military-to-military relations, deal with historic rivalries and tensions and create an environment that permits the governments of the region to modernise their defence forces without triggering suspicions from neighbours or leading to an arms race .

Latin American arms race is escalating

Downie 8 Correspondent (Andrew Downie, Is Latin America heading for an arms race? Christian Science Monitor, January 16 2008,
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Americas/2008/0116/p07s01-woam.html/(page)/2) MR

Increased defense spending by Venezuela, Brazil, and Ecuador, coupled with significant arms purchases by Chile and Colombia, may mark the start of an arms race in South America a region that hasn't seen a major war between nations in decades. " There is a real risk of it escalating and it could become very dangerous ," says Michael Shifter, the vice president of policy at the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington. Concern has grown in the wake of recent purchases by Venezuela and Brazil. Venezuelan President Hugo Chvez, flush with oil money, has spent freely on attack and transport helicopters, Russian fighter planes, and 100,000 Kalashnikov rifles. In neighboring Brazil, which,
with half of Latin America's landmass and population, President Luiz Incio Lula da Silva recently asked Congress to allocate 10.13 billion reais ($5.6 billion) a 53 percent increase for its 2008 military budget. Those increases came after Chile invested significant sums earlier in the decade. Colombia has received hundreds of millions of dollars in US drug-war aid for military purchases. And now Ecuador is also spending more on weapons. "I think that it is done in different places for different motivations," says Mr. Shifter, who testified before the US Congress last year on the implications of Venezuela's increased military spending. "[Mr.] Chvez is using this as part of mobilizing the country and thinking of a possible attack from the US. In Chile, it is much more about giving the armed forces what they want. Colombia spends because a lot of the [US] aid comes in the form of military equipment." The

problem, continues Shifter, is that "there is tremendous mistrust between countries ... if you don't know what your neighbors' intentions are, then it is natural is to build up as much as you can to prepare for any contingency." Some South American nations worry
about Chvez's ambitions and do not want him to gain a significant military edge. "Brazil won't say it, but Chvez's build up is what has made it invest in its military," says Reserve Col. Geraldo Lesbat Cavagnari, coordinator of the Strategic Studies Group at Unicamp university in So Paulo. Brazil and Venezuela already vie for political supremacy in South America with Chvez bringing together the radical leftists under his socialist banner and President Lula leading a more measured coalition of social democrats. At this point, the two leaders are friends and the two nations have no border quarrels or historical feuds that could flare up. But there

are tensions between Venezuela and Colombia over gas-rich territorial waters and border areas where Colombia's FARC guerrillas are active. And Veneuzela has made claims on the western part of Guyana.

Impact is arms race causes miscalc, organized crime, and economic collapse
Casas-Zamora 10 Senior Fellow for Latin America Initiative of The Brookings Institution (Kevin Casas-Zamora November 23, 2010 An
Arms Race in South America? https://www6.miami.edu/hemispheric-policy/Casas-Zamora-MilitaryExpenditureSA.pdf) //KY I will venture that, regardless of whether we are witnessing an

arms race or not, what is happening with military expenditure in South America is not good news for the region. This is not because of the risk that the new military toys might increase the likelihood that the regions rulers might stir up trouble or become trigger happy. This risk exists even without the
new military acquisitions and, in any case, appears to lack popular support, especially in South America, where the population profoundly dislikes the idea of going to war with neighbors.4 The real problem is different. The

absolute increase in military expenditure, and of acquisitions in particular, hinders the regions economic and political development. Even the security benefits of
such expenditures are debatable at best. It is true that, comparatively speaking, military outlays in South America are not high. For instance, in 2007, military disbursements in the typical South American country were at roughly the same level as in Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and the developed West. They were well below the level exhibited by North Africa and the Middle East (Table 1). However, this figure starts to look less benign when put in a broader development context. Why not compare it, for example, to the levels of taxation that sustain the provision of public goods by the state? Why not compare it to the societys investment in education? When we do so, the picture in South A merica is less rosy. It turns out that military expenditure in South America is a higher proportion of tax revenue and of education expenditure than almost anywhere else in the world, with the predictable exception of North Africa and the Middle East. Even Sub-Saharan Africa fares better when we place military spending in this context. Simply put, amid pervasive low taxation in

Latin America, military expenditure does compete with scarce resources for development. This was the conclusion of a series of econometric studies carried out by,
among others, Nobel Economics Laureate Lawrence R. Klein in Guatemala, Bolivia and the Southern Cone. Analyzing data from 1968-94 in Guatemala, Klein, et al., concluded that the

trimming of the military and its demands on scarce resources can result in both short- and long-run gains. In the long run, the gains can be seen in the broadest economic measures, such as GDP, while both shortand long-run gains are expected to occur in household consumption.5 In Latin America, butter continues to be a far wiser economic choice than guns. In addition, increased military

expenditure negatively affects the already endemic corruption in South America. The purchase of military equipment typically involves big international transactions and some exemption from normal transparency rules. If this is a dangerous cocktail anywhere, it is a truly frightening one in Latin America.
Recent weapons acquisitions in Ecuador and Peru have been affected by as yet unproven corruption allegations.6 This is not new, of course. The list of corruption scandals linked to arms procurement in the regiona list that includes former Argentine president, Carlos Menem, and Vladimiro Montesinos, the infamous head of Perus intelligence service during the presidency of Alberto Fujimoriis serious enough to warn against the likely effects that the current trend of military

expenditures could have on the integrity of governments

throughout Latin America. Are these troubling implications justified by the security benefits provided by the new weapons that South
America is purchasing? Hardly. In order to justify their military expenses, some of the regions governments have come up with all kinds of farfetched threats to sovereignty, including U.S. invasions to take control of valuable natural resources.7 While the latter remains a most unlikely occurrence, other security concerns are not. One of them is the lack of effective control over their territory that characterizes quite a few of South American states. It is in

those ungoverned spaces that organized crime thrives, to the point of threatening the viability of the state, as Colombians know very well.

Also, repeal bolsters American credibility internationally

Dickerson 10 (Lieutenant Colonel Sergio M. Dickerson, "United States Security Strategy Towards Cuba," Strategy Research Project,
www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf&AD=ADA518053) MR Today, 20 years have passed since the fall of the Berlin Wall its

time to chip away at the diplomatic wall that still remains between U.S. and Cuba. As we seek a new foreign policy with Cuba it is imperative that we take into consideration that distrust will characterize negotiations with the Cuban government. On the other hand, consider that loosening or lifting the embargo could also be mutually beneficial. Cubas need and Americas surplus capability to provide goods and services could be profitable and eventually addictive to Cuba. Under these conditions, diplomacy has a better chance to flourish. If the Cuban model succeeds President Obama will be seen as a true leader for multilateralism. Success in Cuba could afford the international momentum and credibility to solve other seemingly wicked problems like the Middle East and Kashmir. President Obama could leverage this international reputation with other rogue nations like Iran and North Korea who might associate their plight with Cuba. 35 The U.S. could begin to lead again and reverse its perceived decline in the greater global order bringing true peace for years to come.

Credibility solves geopolitical wars

Kupchan and Shepardson 11 *Professor of international affairs at Georgetown University; **Senior Fellow at the Council on
Foreign Relations, (Charles and Whitney, The false promise of unipolarity: constraints on the exercise of American power, C ambridge Review of International Affairs, June 2011, Vol. 24, No. 2, p. 165-173)//Bwang These examples aside, Brooks and Wohlforth also fail to address another important pathway through which norms

and rules

constrain the exercise of US power. They focus exclusively on the costs to the United States of its own failure to comply with the institutions and rules that Washington took the lead in crafting after the close of World War II. But in the aftermath of the global nancial crisis that began in 2008 and amid the ongoing ascent of China, India, Brazil, and other rising states, change in ordering norms may well be driven by the preferences and policies of emerging powers, not by those of the United States. Moreover, the impressive economic performance and political staying power of regimes that practice non-democratic brands of capitalismsuch as China, Russia, and Saudi Arabiacall into question the durability of the normative order erected during Americas watch. Well before emerging powers catch up with Americas material resources, they will be challenging the normative commitment to open markets and liberal democracy that has dened the Western order. The substantive gap
between the norms of the Western order and those that inform the domestic and foreign policies of rising powers has not gone unnoticed (Kupchan and Mount 2009). Nonetheless, many scholars have offered an illusory response: that the United States and its democratic allies should dedicate the twilight hours of their primacy to universalizing Western norms. According to G John Ikenberry (2008, 37, 25), the United States global position may be weakening, but the international system the United States leads can remain the dominant order of the twentyrst century. The West should sink the roots of this order as deeply as possible to ensure that the world continues to pla y by its rules even as its material preponderance wanes. Such condence

in the universality of the Western order is, however, based on wishful thinking about the likely trajectory of ascending powers, which throughout history have sought to adjust the prevailing order in ways that advantage their own interests. Presuming that rising states will readily embrace Western norms is not only unrealistic, but also dangerous, promising to alienate emerging powers that will be pivotal to global stability in the years ahead (Gat 2007). Brooks and Wohlforth do not address this issuepresumably because
they believe that US preponderance is so durable that they need not concern themselves with the normative orientations of rising powers. But facts on the ground suggest otherwise. China

is, as of 2010, the worlds second largest economy, holds massive amounts of US debt, and is strengthening its economic and strategic presence in many quarters of the globe; the G-8 has given way to the G-20; the prime minister of democratic India has called for new global rules of the game and the reform and revitalization of international institutions (Mahbubane 2008, 235); the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have increased the voting weight of developing countries; and the United Nations Security Council is coming under growing pressure to enlarge the voices of emerging powers. All of these developments come at the expense of the inuence and normative preferences of the United States and its Western allies. By the numbers, Brooks and Wohlforth are correct that unipolarity persists. But rising powers are already challenging the pecking order and guiding norms of the international system. If the next international system is to be characterized by norm-governed order rather than competitive anarchy, the West will have to make room for the competing visions of rising powers. A new order will have to be based on great-power consensus and toleration of political diversity rather than the normative hegemony of the West.

Warming Impacts
And, its key to solve warming Hague 10 (William Hague, Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs and Member of Parliament for Richmond, United
Kingdom, The Diplomacy of Climate Change, 9/27/10) //KY A world that is failing to respond to climate change is one in which the values embodied in the United Nations will not be met, and it's a world in which competition and conflict would win out over collaboration. We're at a very crucial point in the global debate on this subject. Many people are questioning, in the wake of Copenhagen, whether we should continue to seek a response to climate change through the U.N. and whether we can ever hope to deal with this enormous challenge. And I will first argue today that an effective response to climate change underpins our security and prosperity; second, that our

response should be to strive for a binding global deal, whatever the setbacks; and third, I will set out why effective deployment of foreign policy assets is crucial to mobilizing the political will needed if we're going to shape an effective response. The post-war leaders set up the United Nations in
the aftermath of conflagration. They saw the pressing need for global solutions to global problems: cooperation not conflict, through frameworks and institutions embedded in the rule of law, and an international system that is fair and offers everyone a realistic prospect of security and prosperity. Failure to respond to climate change is inimical to all these values, undermining trust between nations, intensifying competition for resources, and shrinking the political space available for cooperation. It is an affront to fairness, since it puts the greatest burden on those who have done least to cause the problem and are least able to deal with its consequences. It is incompatible with the values and aspirations that the U.N. embodies. And it's incompatible with the values and aspirations of British foreign policy. For

more than 20 years, we've been striving to build an effective international response to climate change. But we have lacked the collective ambition required. We need to shift investment urgently from high-carbon "business as usual" to the lowcarbon economy. This means building an essentially decarbonized global economy by mid- century. At the same time, we must ensure development is climate resilient; otherwise, the changes in climate that are already unavoidable will block the path for hundreds of millions of people from poverty to prosperity. These changes also threaten to sweep away the investments in development we have made, and just as the bridges and schools in Pakistan were swept away. To drive that shift in investment from low to high carbon, we need a global climate change deal under the United Nations. Now, some have argued that we should abandon hope of doing so. They say Copenhagen proved it's all too difficult; we should focus instead on less inclusive and less demanding responses, such as coalitions of the willing. But we believe this would be a strategic error. It mistakes the nature of the task, which is to expand the realm of the possible, not to lower our ambition by accepting its current limits. And we must recognize this at Cancun. One thing Copenhagen did give us was a set of political commitments, captured in the Copenhagen Accord, on which we can build. More than 120 countries have now associated themselves with that accord, and that represents a broad and growing consensus. We now need to ensure that we live up to the commitments we made to each other in the accord, and reach out even more widely. Copenhagen, despite those accords, was a strategic setback, but it was not by any means the end of the road. We need to be clear why it failed to live up to high expectations and why it did not deliver a legally binding deal. Many people say that it failed because of process: The diplomats and the politicians had created a negotiation that was too difficult and too complex. But this misses the point. International treaties are an outcome, not an input, of political bargains. If you've made the political commitment to deliver, you can make the process work to deliver. The

real reason Copenhagen did not deliver on high expectations was a lack of political will. Many in developing countries saw a gap between the words and the deeds of the industrialized economies. They questioned whether we really believed our own rhetoric . And to answer those questions, we each need to start
at home. That why the coalition government to which I belong has committed itself to being the greenest government ever in the United Kingdom, and why, with others in Europe, we are calling on the European Union to commit to a 30-percent cut in emissions by 2020 without waiting for the rest of the world to act. The UK is already the world leader in offshore wind, with more projects installed, in planning and in construction than any other country in the world. We're undertaking the most radical transformation of our electricity sector ever. We aim to provide over 30 percent of our domestic electricity from renewables by 2020. We have committed to build no new coal-fired power stations without carbon capture and storage technology, and we've announced our intention to continue the demonstration projects of that. And because it's imperative that foreign and domestic policies are mutually reinforcing, we must ensure that our approach is coherent. Now, that's one reason we have established the new British National Security Council: to ensure this happens across the full range of issues, including climate change. And that's why I work hand in glove with Chris Huhne, the British Energy and Climate Change secretary, and Andrew Mitchell, the International Development secretary, to ensure that our domestic action reflects our level of international ambition. But we won't succeed, of course, if we act alone. We must aim for a framework that is global and binding. It needs to be global because climate change affects everyone. Only a response that allows everyone a voice will generate a sense of common purpose and legitimacy. Only a response that is binding will convince investors that we intend to keep the promises we make to each other. Businesses need clear political signals, so let's show them an unequivocal green light. The core assets of foreign policy are its networks and its convening power. Foreign

policy can build political impulses to overcome barriers between sectors and cultures. In a networked world, diplomacy builds partnerships beyond government. And nowhere are those partnerships more vital than on climate. So we must mobilize all our networks, not just across government but between governments, using organizations such as the
Commonwealth as well. We must reach out, beyond, to NGOs, faith groups and businesses. And of all these, perhaps business engagement is

the key to making a difference. It's business that will lead low-carbon transition. It's business that best understands the incentives needed to help us all prosper.

Warming is real, anthropogenic and causes extinction Flournoy 12 PhD from UT, former Dean of the University College @ Ohio University, former Associate Dean at SUNY and Case Institute of
Technology, Former Manager for Unviersity/Industry Experiments for the NASA ACTS Satellite, currently Professor of Telecommunications @ Ohio University, ***Citing Feng Hsu, PhdD NASA Scientist @ the Goddard Space Flight Center, (Don FLournoy, January 2012 Solar Power Satellites, Springer Briefs in Space Development, p. 10-11) //KY In the Online Journal of Space Communication , Dr. Feng Hsu, a NASA scientist at Goddard Space Flight Center, a research center in the forefront of science of space and Earth, writes, The

evidence of global warming is alarming, noting the potential for a catastrophic planetary climate change is real and troubling (Hsu 2010 ) . Hsu and his NASA colleagues were engaged in monitoring and analyzing climate changes on a global scale, through which they received first-hand scientific information and data relating to global warming issues, including the dynamics of polar ice cap melting. After discussing this research with colleagues who were world experts on the subject, he wrote: I now have no doubt global temperatures are rising, and that global warming is a serious problem confronting all of humanity. No matter whether these trends are due to human interference or to the cosmic cycling of our solar system, there are two basic facts that are crystal clear: (a) there is overwhelming scientific evidence showing positive correlations between the level of CO2 concentrations in Earths atmosphere with respect to the historical fluctuations of global temperature changes; and (b) the overwhelming majority of the worlds scientific community is in agreement about the risks of a potential catastrophic global climate change. That is, if we humans continue to ignore this problem and do nothing, if we continue dumping huge quantities of greenhouse gases into Earths biosphere, humanity will be at dire risk (Hsu 2010 ) . As a technology risk assessment expert, Hsu says he can show with some confidence that the planet will face more risk
doing nothing to curb its fossil-based energy addictions than it will in making a fundamental shift in its energy supply. This, he writes, is because the

risks of a catastrophic anthropogenic climate change can be potentially the extinction of human

species , a risk that is simply too high for us to take any chances (Hsu 2010) Warming destroys the worlds oceans and cause extinction Sify 10 ***citing Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, professor at University of Queensland and Director of the Global Change Institute, and John Bruno,
associate professor of Marine Science at UNC, (Sify News Could unbridled climate changes lead to human extinction? http://www.sify.com/news/could-unbridled-climate-changes-lead-to-human-extinction-news-international-kgtrOhdaahc.html) The findings of the comprehensive report: 'The impact of climate change on the world's marine ecosystems' emerged from a synthesis of recent research on the world's oceans, carried out by two of the world's leading marine scientists. One of the authors of the report is Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, professor at The University of Queensland and the director of its Global Change Institute (GCI). 'We

may see sudden, unexpected changes that have serious ramifications for the overall wellbeing of humans, including the capacity of the planet to support people. This is further evidence that we are well on the way to the next great extinction event,' says Hoegh-Guldberg. 'The findings have enormous implications for mankind, particularly if the trend continues. The earth's ocean, which produces half of the oxygen we breathe and absorbs 30 per cent of human-generated carbon dioxide, is equivalent to its heart and lungs. This study shows worrying signs of ill-health. It's as if the earth has been smoking two packs of cigarettes a day!,' he added. 'We are entering a period in which the ocean services upon which humanity depends are undergoing massive change and in some cases beginning to fail', he added. The 'fundamental and comprehensive' changes to marine life identified in the report include rapidly warming and acidifying oceans, changes in water circulation and expansion of dead zones within the ocean depths. These are driving major changes in marine ecosystems: less abundant coral reefs, sea grasses and mangroves (important fish nurseries); fewer, smaller fish; a breakdown in food chains; changes in the distribution of marine life; and more frequent diseases and pests among marine organisms. Study coauthor John F Bruno, associate professor in marine science at The University of North Carolina, says greenhouse gas emissions are modifying many physical and geochemical aspects of the planet's oceans, in ways 'unprecedented in nearly a million years'. 'This is causing fundamental and comprehensive changes to the way marine ecosystems function,' Bruno warned,
according to a GCI release.

Mars provessolar changes are inevitable and cause more warming National Post, 2007 (Lawrence Solomon, staff writer, February 7, Look to Mars for the Truth on Globl Warming
http://www.nationalpost.com/story.html?id=edae9952-3c3e-47ba-913f-7359a5c7f723&k=0/) Climate change is a much, much bigger issue than the public, politicians, and even the most alarmed environmentalists realize. Global

warming extends to Mars, where the polar ice cap is shrinking, where deep gullies in the landscape are now laid bare, and where the climate is the warmest it has been in decades or centuries. "One explanation could be that Mars is just coming out of an
ice age," NASA scientist William Feldman speculated after the agency's Mars Odyssey completed its first Martian year of data collection. "In some low-latitude areas, the ice has already dissipated." With each passing year more and more evidence arises of the dramatic changes occurring on the only planet on the solar system, apart from Earth, to give up its climate secrets. NASA's findings in space come as no surprise to Dr. Habibullo Abdussamatov at Saint Petersburg's Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory. Pulkovo -- at the pinnacle of Russia's space-oriented scientific establishment -- is one of the world's best equipped observatories and has been since its founding in 1839. Heading Pulkovo's space research laboratory is Dr. Abdussamatov, one of the world's chief critics of the theory that man-made carbon dioxide emissions create a greenhouse effect, leading to global warming. "Mars has

global warming, but without a greenhouse and without the participation of Martians," he told me. "These parallel global warmings -- observed simultaneously on Mars and on Earth - can only be a straightline consequence of the effect of the one same factor: a long-time change in solar irradiance."
The sun's increased irradiance over the last century, not C02 emissions, is responsible for the global warming we're seeing, says the celebrated scientist, and this solar irradiance also explains the great volume of C02 emissions. "It

is no secret that increased solar irradiance warms Earth's oceans, which then triggers the emission of large amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. So the common view that man's industrial activity is a deciding factor in global warming has emerged from a misinterpretation of cause and effect relations." Dr. Abdussamatov goes further, debunking the very notion of a greenhouse effect. "Ascribing 'greenhouse' effect properties to the Earth's atmosphere is not scientifically substantiated," he maintains. "Heated greenhouse gases, which become lighter as a result of expansion, ascend to the atmosphere only to give the absorbed heat away."

Plan K/ Credibility
Engagement with Cuba key to US credibility and diplomatic standing Castor 13 U.S. Representative for Florida's 14th congressional district, serving in Congress (Kathy, WHAT I LEARNED IN CUBA, Tampa
Bay, 5/19/13, Lexis)//Bwang During my visit, Cuban

officials made it clear to me they would like the embargo lifted and that they seek an improved relationship. America's allies in the Western Hemisphere have encouraged the United States to do so. Cuba and its citizens are more than a decade behind with respect to the Internet and broadband. Expansion of this advanced technology will be slow, but the improvement to human rights and efficiencies to Cuban society could be enormous. Cuba and other foreign interests continue to prospect for oil in its
territorial waters (so close to sensitive environmental resources in the Florida Straits). Despite multilateral discussions among the United States and Caribbean nations, the United States should have a more direct relationship. Cuba and Brazil are making a large investment in the modernization of Cuba's Port of Mariel in advance of the widening of the Panama Canal. U.S. ports, businesses and environmental concerns would benefit, or at least gain greater influence and understanding, with more direct engagement. Small businesses, the tourism industry, Tampa International Airport and the Port of Tampa are poised to take advantage of broadening travel and trade to the island nation. Tampa Bay has the opportunity to become a "Gateway to Cuba." We can market Tampa to families, educational groups and cultural organizations traveling to Cuba as a jumping-off point to the island nation. They can learn about Cuba, participate in language and other immersion courses, eat in our restaurants and stay in our hotels. Doing so will create jobs here in travel and tourism, and our small businesses will benefit. These circumstances provide an opportunity for the United States to engage in a dialogue with Cuba to lift trade restrictions while promoting greater human rights for the Cuban people. Lifting

travel restrictions would not only be consistent with Americans' constitutional right to travel, it would facilitate greater exchange between the two countries and remove costly regulatory burdens.
Americans are free to travel anywhere else in the world, including countries on the State Department's State Sponsor of Terrorism list. No rationale exists to singularly prohibit travel to Cuba. The agency responsible for enforcement of travel restrictions and sanctions has other, more pressing responsibilities in real "hot spots" around the world. They should be able to focus on bad actors around the globe - like Iran and Syria - rather than red tape paperwork for Americans who wish to exercise their right to travel. The travel ban should be lifted or, at the very least, the United States should all allow permissible travel to be carried out under a general license. Streamlining travel would save resources at a time of sequester and significant federal belt-tightening. Reforming Cuba

policy will improve our diplomatic standing in the region and, at a critical moment, strengthen the credibility of our policy against terrorism. The Summit of the Americas concluded in 2012 with a warning from our allies that if Cuba is not allowed to attend the 2015 Summit of the Americas in Panama, they will boycott this important regional conference. The Obama administration should use the next two years to put U.S.-Cuban relations on a constructive path. In this
context, America could send a powerful signal to our allies in the region by responding creatively and appropriately to the peace negotiations taking place in Cuba between the government of Colombia and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. These peace talks may result in an end to five decades of violence and provide the United States with an important foreign policy victory. The United States has devoted years of leadership and millions of dollars of investment for peace in Colombia. All Western Hemisphere nations, including Cuba, should continue to work together to end the violence. The

Obama administration and Cuban government recently proved that direct dialogue can produce positive results. Right on the heels of my return to Tampa, Cuban officials expeditiously returned Cole and Chase Hakken, ages 4 and 2, who had been kidnapped by their parents in Tampa and taken by boat to Cuba. I was able to speak directly to U.S. and Cuban officials to ensure that the boys were safe and urge their speedy return. Through the contacts I had made days earlier, I was able to connect the U.S. consul with the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Department and the boys' grandparents. The ability to communicate with these officials I had just met in Cuba is a simple example of the value of engagement and why it should become a principal feature of a new, reformed policy.

Lifting the embargo would massively improve our image to the rest of the world violates human rights, the constitution and tanks economies
Reuters 12 International news agency headquartered in London, United Kingdom (Cuba says ending U.S. embargo would help both
countries, Reuters, 9/20/12, http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/09/20/us-cuba-usa-embargo-idUSBRE88J15G20120920)//Bwang (Reuters) - Both

the United States and Cuba would benefit if Washington would lift its longstanding trade embargo against the island, but U.S. President Barack Obama has toughened the sanctions since taking office in 2009, a top

Cuban official said on Thursday. The

embargo, fully in place since 1962, has done $108 billion in damage to the Cuba economy, but also has violated the constitutional rights of Americans and made a market of 11 million people off limits to U.S. companies, Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez told reporters. "The blockade is, without doubt, the principal cause of the economic problems of our country and the essential obstacle for (our) development," he said, using Cuba's term for the embargo. "The blockade provokes suffering, shortages, difficulties that reach each Cuban family, each Cuban child," Rodriguez said. He spoke at a press conference that Cuba stages each year
ahead of what has become an annual vote in the United Nations on a resolution condemning the embargo. The vote is expected to take place next month. Last year, 186

countries voted for the resolution, while only the United States and Israel supported the embargo, Rodriguez said. Lifting the embargo would improve the image of the United States around the world, he said, adding that it would also end what he called a "massive, flagrant and systematic violation of human rights." That violation includes restrictions on U.S. travel to the island that require most Americans to get U.S. government permission to visit and a ban on most U.S. companies doing business in Cuba, he said. "The prohibition of travel for Americans is an atrocity from the constitutional point of view," Rodriguez said. Cuba has its own limits on travel that make it difficult for most of its citizens to leave the country for any destination. Rodriguez said the elimination of the embargo would provide a much-needed tonic for the sluggish U.S. economy. "In a moment of economic crisis, lifting the blockade would contribute to the United States a totally new market of 11 million people. It would generate employment and end the situation in which American companies cannot compete in Cuba," he said. Obama, who said early in his presidency that he wanted to recast long-hostile U.S.-Cuba relations, has been a disappointment to the Cuban government, which expected him to do more to dismantle the embargo. He has lifted some restrictions on travel and all on the sending of remittances to the island, but Rodriguez said he has broadened the embargo and its enforcement in other areas. Fines against U.S. and foreign companies and individuals who have violated the
embargo have climbed from $89 million in 2011 to $622 million so far this year, he said. U.S.-Cuba relations thawed briefly under Obama, but progress came to a halt when Cuba arrested U.S. contractor Alan Gross in Havana in December 2009. Gross was subsequently sentenced to 15 years in prison for setting up Internet networks in Cuba under a controversial U.S. program that Cuba views as subversive. Rodriguez dodged questions about how U.S. policy toward Cuba might change if Obama is re-elected in November or if Republican candidate Mitt Romney wins the presidency, but said whoever is in office will have a chance to make history. "Any

American president would have the opportunity to make a historic change," he said. "He would go into history as the man who rectified a policy that has failed."

Cuba is key to US multilateral credibility

Hakim 13 - President Emeritus and Senior Fellow at the Inter-American Dialogue, member of the CFR, Master of Public and International
Affairs at Princeton Universitys Woodrow Wilson School (Peter Hakim, Post Chavez: Can U.S. rebuild Latin American ties?, March 27 2013, http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2013/03/27/post-chavez-can-u-s-rebuild-latin-american-ties/) MR Recent developments suggest, however, that for

Washington to regain clout in regional affairs, it must it end its standoff with Cuba. U.S. policy toward Cuba sets Washington against the views of every Latin American and Caribbean government. Long-standing U.S. efforts to isolate and sanction Cuba, have, counterproductively, brought every country in Latin America to Cubas defense with a general admiration of Havanas resistance to U.S. pressures. Because this U.S. policy is viewed as so extreme, no Latin America country is willing to criticize Cuba almost regardless of its words or actions. Chavez, with his close association with Cuba, possessed some of that immunity with his neighbors leaving him unaccountable for his violations of democracy, human rights and decency. His funeral made it clear that the United States has a lot of work to do to prevent that immunity from spreading.

The embargo decimates US credibility with the UN repeal would signal a multilateral transition
Weinmann 4 directs programs on Cuba and the Americas at the World Policy Institute in New York City (Lissa Weinmann, Washington's
Irrational Cuba Policy World Policy Journal, Volume XXI, No. 1, spring 2004, http://www.worldpolicy.newschool.edu/wpi/journal/articles/wpj04-1/weinmann.html) MR Internationally, the

U.S. finds itself alone in upholding Cuba sanctions. When the European Union decried Cubas crackdown on dissidents last year, it condemned the U.S. policy in the same breath. The 1996 Helms-Burton law that

extends the embargo to foreign subsidiaries of U.S. corporations violates

the very international legal standards Washington has worked for decades to create. For ten years running, the U.N. General Assembly has censured the embargo by increasing margins, most recently 157 to 3, with the negative votes coming from the United States, Israel (notwithstanding its extensive investments in Cuba), and the Marshall Islands. In the last year or so, the United States has lost its seats on the human rights commissions of both the United Nations and the Organization of American States, which many people see as rebukes to Washington over its Cuba policy. A change in that policy would signal that the United States is willing to work toward a multilateral approach to Cuban human rights that would necessarily involve diplomacy and engagement.

Repeal Now Key to Credibility

The UN Security Council agrees the time is ideal, the plan is a step towards consolatory
Ruiz 9 (Albor, NY Times Political Correspondent, Latin leaders urge U.S. to lift Cuba embargo, 9/26/09, http://www.nydailynews.com/newyork/latin-leaders-urge-u-s-lift-cuba-embargo-article-1.402175, MDM) It wasn't the main story to emerge from the United Nations last week and, as such, it hasn't been widely reported. Yet, the 48-year U.S.

embargo of Cuba was very much part of the agenda during the 64th session of the General Assembly that ends Monday. Clearly, the issue of the longest embargo in modern history is not about to go away. Without a doubt the biggest news was the unanimous endorsement by the UN Security Council, with President Obama presiding, of a broad strategy to halt
the proliferation of nuclear weapons and eventually eliminate them from the planet. "This is a historic moment, a moment offering a fresh start toward a new future," said the Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. Similar words have been uttered before, but seldom have they sounded so truthful. Nevertheless, many other issues were also on the world leaders' agenda. Along with speeches opposing the posting of U.S. military personnel in seven Colombian army bases and multiple calls for restoring democratically elected Manuel Zelaya to the presidency of Honduras,

several Latin American heads of state demanded the lifting of the economic embargo the people of Cuba have been subjected to for half a century. Their position was not new. All had called on President Obama to end the
draconian measure last June at the Organization of American States' annual assembly in Honduras. Here in New York, it was Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula de Silva who issued the first plea for abolishing the blockade (as they call the embargo in Cuba), calling it an "obsolete measure." Uruguay's president, Tabar Vzquez, also expressed his country's desire for a new policy. "As Americans" [that is, all people born on the continent], he said, "we feel the ethical duty and the political responsibility of reiterating in this world forum that we will persevere in our effort for an American integration without exclusions, exceptions or blockades like the one Cuba is suffering." Evo Morales, the president of Bolivia, pointed out that in order to change the world for the better, first "we must change the UN and end the blockade to Cuba."

Venezuelan President Hugo Chvez, a friend of Fidel Castro and the Cuban Revolution, also asked that the embargo be lifted, a demand he restated Thursday night during a one-hour CNN interview with Larry King. "As we asked him in
June, Obama should break the embargo already," Chvez told King, referring to the OAS meeting. The opposition to the failed embargo policy goes beyond Latin America. In what could be a record, the General Assembly has voted overwhelmingly for 17 years in a row to urge the U.S. to lift the anachronistic embargo. The

time is long overdue for Congress and President Obama to heed the world's opinion and toss the failed embargo into the ash heap of history. That would really be in sync with his administration's
policy of engagement with and mutual respect for Cuba, Latin America and the world.

The international community supports the move to end the embargo, which it views as a violation of I-law
VMFA 11 (Vietnam Ministry of Foreign Affairs, VN supports UN call for end of embargo against Cuba, 10/26/11,
http://en.vietnamplus.vn/Home/VN-supports-UN-call-for-end-of-embargo-against-Cuba/201110/21824.vnplus, MDM)

The United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) on Oct. 25 adopted a resolution on the need to end the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the US against Cuba with 186 ayes, two noes and three blank votes. At the UNGA plenary session, permanent representative of Vietnam Ambassador Le Hoang Trung said Vietnam shares the view of the international community that the US should end the embargo against Cuba . The policies and measures in pursuit of the embargo against Cuba, including the Helms-Burton Act, go against international law and the purposes and principles of the United Nations Charter, hinder the development of friendly relations among nations, and violate the right of people to self-determination, to determine their political system and path of development, said the Vietnamese diplomat. The restrictions in trade, finance and even travel continue to have serious illegal extraterritorial effects on the sovereignty of other states as well as efforts towards an equal and just global economic structure for the prosperity of every nation, said Trung. Representatives of members of G77 group, the Non-Aligned Movement, the African Union, the Caribbean
Community, MERCOSUR (the Common Market of the South) and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation strongly condemned the US embargo, affirming that it has violated the international law and gone against the UN Charter. They demanded that the US implement the UNGAs resolutions and immediately put an end to its illegal embargo against Cuba . Cuban

Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla valued the international communitys support to Havana s legitimate struggle to demand

Washington to lift its irrational embargo unconditionally. The US policy on Cuba has seriously violated international law and human rights, said the Cuban FM. Meanwhile, Russian Ambassador to the UN Vitali Churkin
affirmed that discrimination measures, including the embargo, are totally unacceptable in the current context and they are evidence of a rude intervention into Cuba s internal affairs. This is the 20th consecutive year the UNGA adopted a resolution on the issue.

Now Key to Summits

Cubas absence from the Summit of the Americas put the OAS on the brink and accelerated anti-Americanism
LA Times 12 (Time to include Cuba Los Angeles Times, April 17 2012, http://articles.latimes.com/2012/apr/17/opinion/la-ed-cubasummit-20120417) MR Once again, Cuba

was absent from the Summit of the Americas. Yet the communist nation might as well have attended the gathering last weekend in Cartagena, Colombia, because it took center stage , despite U.S. efforts to focus on other issues. Ecuador's president refused to attend the summit in protest of Cuba's exclusion. Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos and Brazil's Dilma Rouseff, both moderates rather than left-wingers, said there should be no more Summits of the Americas without Cuba . A leftist bloc of nations that includes Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia and some Caribbean countries said it won't participate again unless Cuba does. And the meeting ended without a final joint declaration because the United States and Canada refused to agree to language specifying that Cuba would be invited to future summits. The controversy should serve as a wake-up call to the United States: The policy of banning Cuba from the gathering of the hemisphere's leaders for nearly 18 years is backfiring. It hasn't led to regime change any more than the 50-year-old U.S. trade embargo on Cuba has; it hasn't persuaded
President Raul Castro or, before him, his brother Fidel to embrace democratic reforms, hold free elections or abandon human rights abuses.

Instead, it has fueled frustration among Latin leaders. Today, the United States is the only country in the hemisphere that has not restored diplomatic relations with Havana. Even the Organization of American States, sometimes
called an instrument of U.S. foreign policy, cleared the way for Cuba to return to the group in 2009. The Obama administration has denied that its goal in excluding position is

Cuba is to keep Cuban American voters in Florida happy during a presidential election year. Whatever the reason, the not playing well with leaders in the region, who see embargoes and political isolation as anachronistic policies from the Cold War era. The United States should abandon its push to keep Cuba from attending the Americas summit. Engagement , not isolation, is the best way to encourage change without alienating allies.

Hemispheric Cooperation Impacts

First is hemispheric cooperation engagement through a summit invitation is key
French 12 - Director for the U.S.-Cuba Policy Initiative at the New America Foundation, MA @ George Washington (Anya French, Quandary
Over Cuba: Will There Be a 7th Summit of the Americas? The Havana Note, 2012, http://thehavananote.com/node/1008) MR

With the inconclusive 6th Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, Colombia wrapping up this weekend, will there be any way to bridge the gaps most visibly over Cubas exclusion and between the United States and many of its most crucial partners in the region and keep these presidential level summits between the countries of North and South America going in the future? First we have to ask whether the regions leaders want these Summits badly enough? Many of the countries the U.S. has
the strongest differences with might well prefer to let the Summit of the Americas die and to promote instead CELAC, a new 33-member regional organization which includes all countries in the Western Hemisphere (including Cuba) except for the United States and Canada. As for those countries not at ideological odds with the United States, such as Brazil and Colombia, dont they project the greatest possible strength as regional leaders when holding their own in forums that include, rather than exclude, the United States? And certainly the

United States would rather be inside the tent than outside of it, for that is the best way to exercise broad influence in the region. Though there are other significant policy debates between the United States and others in the hemisphere, the Cuba issue has become a major and potentially irreconcilable obstacle to moving forward.
When the 34 leaders in attendance in 1994 agreed to uphold and defend the principles of representative democracy and universal human rights, Cuba was not invited to participate (and, at the time, Cubas suspension from the Organization of American States, from which these summits grew, was still in place). But today, nearly

all of the regions players - Colombia, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Venezuela, Ecuador, to name the most outspoken - are calling for there to be no more Summits of the Americas without Cuban representation . Does this reflect a lesser, or relative, commitment to democracy and human rights by these countries? It
might. But I have a hard time believing these leaders would carelessly shred the principles and progress that have increasing redefined the region over nearly two decades. This tension has been a long time coming, and the United States own shifting positions on democracy, human rights and terrorism vis a vis Cuba and a number of other countries to which it gives a relative free pass, have been partly to blame. Whereas any American president appears hamstrung over Cuba due to the outsize influence of one domestic political constituency, leaders around the region are also all responding to domestic and regional politics for which Cuba is a symbol. Mexico is a key example. Despite a decade of tense relations with Cuba, Mexicos conservative outgoing president stopped in Cuba on his way to the Summit and declared that Mexico seeks a renewed relationship with Cuba. He did this because improving ties to Cuba would benefit his partys presidential candidate in this years election, both because historically Mexicos leftist government enjoyed better ties to Cuba and because it provides distance from Washington, an ally that hasnt measured up to Mexicans expectations during Calderons tenure. And countries like Brazil and Colombia can boost their standing as regional leaders unencumbered by American dictates by refusing to isolate or even chide Cuba. Meanwhile, President Obama

defended U.S. opposition to bringing Cuba into the Summits by lamenting Cubas lack of respect for democracy and human rights, adding, Im hoping the transition takes place.
Of course, whenever an American president utters the word transition with respect to Cuba, its hard not to hear President George W. Bush, for whom transition meant regime change. Its

hard to see how the next Summit comes together with so many of the regions leaders insisting that Cuba be in attendance, and the United States (and Canada) unwilling to compromise on the principles for participation the regions leaders set up in 1994. This stand-off, which could truly weaken hemispheric cooperation and unity (what there is of it) if it is not resolved, is one more reason why Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ought to be free to aggressively re-engage the Cuban government on
bilateral issues or to update U.S. policy outside of any bilateral negotiation - starting the day after the presidential election, no matter

Breaking the logjam on a few key bilateral issues could help both sides save face and accept less, or more, as the case may be, than theyd like in Panama in 2015 .
who wins.

The alternative is escalating Latin violence organized crime, Colombia, and Argentina
Bouvier 12 PhD in Latin American Studies @ Berkeley (Virginia Bouvier, Summit of the Americas, US Institute of Peace, 2012,
http://www.usip.org/publications/summit-the-americas) MR While regional conflicts in the Americas are not officially on the summit agenda, the

summit will provide opportunities to discuss the impact of violence and conflict on the regions prospects for prosperity, growth, and security. The summit also provides an opportunity for the region to commit itself to non-violent mechanisms for resolving these

conflicts. Three conflict scenarios are missing from the formal agenda, but are of major concern for the hemisphere: First, Colombias longstanding war has created a humanitarian disaster of vast proportions that is undermining security and peace in the region. The conflict has forcibly displaced between 3.2-4.9 million Colombians, and sent 400,000 Colombians across the borders (mainly into Ecuador and Venezuela) in search of refuge. There are signs of escalating violence, particularly in the border areas, where trafficking in humans, weapons, and drugs is also pervasive. Nonetheless,
the stars appear to be lining up within Colombia for a political solution. President Santos is moving ahead with bold land reforms and programs to provide reparations to hundreds of thousands of victims and to restore more than 6 million hectares of land to their rightful owners. The two main guerrilla groupsthe FARC and the ELNhave been calling for dialogue since Santos was elected. The FARCs unilateral hostage release earlier this week (facilitated in part by Brazil) and its recent announcement that it will halt the practice of kidnapping for profit is unprecedented. If implemented, it offers a first step toward building confidence between the sides that could open up new possibilities for peace. The

summit in Cartagena will provide timely opportunities for the hemisphere to weigh in on the urgency of a political solution to the conflict. Second, the summit will provide an opportunity to strategize about new ways to address from a regional perspective the wave of violent crime and insecurity sweeping the region. Such criminality, exacerbated by drug-trafficking, gangs, and organized crime, feeds on weak and inadequate state institutions, corruption, social and economic exclusion, and the alienation of youth. Strong-arm policies and the engagement of the military in fighting drugs have
unleashed their own set of related problems, particularly in Mexico, where some 47,000 people have been killed in the last six years, and new regional approaches are desperately needed. Third, Argentine

and British leaders are engaged in a campaign that is opening old wounds and renewing resentments over what is seen as British colonial control in the hemisphere. Thirty years ago this week, Argentinas military junta invaded the Malvinas/Falklands Islands, then under dispute, and
after 74 days and 900 deaths, lost control of the Islands to the British. Both Britain and Argentina have been traveling across the

A consensus at the Summit urging the parties to enter negotiations, as recommended decades ago by the United Nations, could be timely and prevent the current inflammatory rhetoric from igniting a renewal of violent conflict.
hemisphere in recent weeks to garner support for their opposing positions respecting territorial sovereignty.

Latin America instability empowers Brazilian hardliners Millett 02 PhD, Senior Fellow at the North-South Center, Oppenheimer Chair of Modern Warfighting Strategy at the U.S. Marine Corps
University, Professor Emeritus of History at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville (Richard L. Millet Oct. 2002 Strategic Studies Institute, Colombia's Conflicts: The Spillover Effects of a Wider War) //KY While the

spillover of Colombias conflicts has exacerbated the problems of the region significantly and has reduced the resources available to confront mounting political and economic dilemmas, it is by no means the
principal cause of these problems. The economies and/or the political leadership of every one of Colombias neighbors are in jeopardy. In part, this stems from global economic problems further fueled by volatile commodity prices, the U.S. recession and the Argentine economic collapse, declines in investor confidence, and the difficulties of adjusting to a globalized economy. Even more, it reflects the failure of political leadership, dogged by traditions of corruption and divisive politics. In Ecuador and Brazil,

no party can count on a majority in Congress,

and high levels of uncertainty cloud upcoming presidential elections. The governments in Peru and Panama must deal with the heritage of past corruption, with a growing perception of them as weak and 28 incompetent, and with steadily declining levels of popular support. In Venezuela, President Chavez came to power largely because of a massive public rejection of the traditional political class, but he has become a symbol of divisiveness instead of unity, facing the constant threat of ouster by constitutional or by unconstitutional means. This

mix of political and economic crisis provides the fertile ground in which the alliance of political and criminal violence thrives. It undermines efforts to stabilize democracy and install anything approaching the rule of law. An August 2002 poll showed this trend widespread throughout Latin America. Citizens increasingly blamed the political class for their problems and half said they wouldnt mind if an authoritarian government came to power. Support for free market economics also showed a sharp decline.98 Venezuelas political crisis is the ultimate wild card in efforts
to promote any regional response to Colombias conflicts. Until that is resolved, finding any common agenda will be nearly impossible.

Brazils regional power ambitions, combined with its suspicions of any outside involvement in the Amazon Basin, the traditional enmity between Peru and Ecuador and between Venezuela and Colombia, and the extreme weakness of the Panamanian security apparatus, are also obstacles which will be difficult to overcome.

Brazil hardliner takeover causes nuclear war Schulz, 2k Ph.D., Chair of Political Science at Cleveland State U., fmr. Research Professor of National Security at the Strategic Studies
Institute of the US Army College, (Donald E. Schulz, March 2k. Strategic Studies Institute, The United States and Latin America: Shaping an Elusive Future) //KY Until recently, the primary U.S. concern about Brazil has been that it might acquire nuclear weapons and delivery systems. In the 1970s, the Brazilian military embarked on a secret program to develop an atom bomb. By the late 1980s, both Brazil and Argentina were aggressively pursuing nuclear development programs that had clear military spin-offs.54 There were powerful military and civilian advocates of developing nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles within both countries. Today, however, the situation has changed. As a result of political leadership transitions in both countries, Brazil and Argentina now appear firmly committed to restricting their nuclear programs to peaceful purposes. They have entered into various nuclear-related agreements with each othermost notably the quadripartite comprehensive safeguards agreement (1991), which permits the inspection of all their nuclear installations by the International Atomic Energy 26 Agencyand have joined the Missile Technology Control Regime. Even so, no one can be certain about the future. As Scott Tollefson has observed: . . .

the military application of Brazils nuclear and space programs depends less on technological considerations than on political will. While technological constraints present a formidable barrier to achieving nuclear bombs and ballistic missiles, that barrier is
not insurmountable. The critical element, therefore, in determining the applications of Brazils nuclear and space technologies will be primarily political.55 Put simply,

if changes in political leadership were instrumental in redirecting Brazils nuclear program towards peaceful purposes, future political upheavals could still produce a reversion to previous orientations. Civilian supremacy is not so strong that it could not be swept away by a coup, especially if the legitimacy of the current democratic experiment were to be undermined by economic crisis and growing poverty/inequality. Nor are civilian leaders necessarily less militaristic or more committed to democracy than the military. The example of Perus Fujimori comes immediately to
mind. How serious a threat might Brazil potentially be? It has been estimated that if the nuclear plant at Angra dos Reis (Angra I) were only producing at 30 percent capacity, it could produce five 20-kiloton weapons a year. If production from other plants were included, Brazil would have a capability three times greater than India or Pakistan. Furthermore,

its defense industry already has a substantial

missile producing capability. On the other hand, the country has a very limited capacity to project its military power via air and sealift
or to sustain its forces over long distances. And though a 1983 law authorizes significant military manpower increases (which could place Brazil at a numerical level slightly higher than France, Iran and Pakistan), such growth will be restricted by a lack of economic resources. Indeed, the development of all these military potentials has been, and will continue to be, 27 severely constrained by a lack of money. (Which is one reason Brazil decided to engage in arms control with Argentina in the first place.) 56 In short, a

restoration of Brazilian militarism, imbued with nationalistic ambitions for great power status, is not unthinkable, and such a regime could present some fairly serious problems. That government would probably need foreign as well as domestic enemies to help justify its existence. One obvious candidate would be the United States, which would presumably be critical of any return to dictatorial rule. Beyond this, moreover, the spectre of a predatory international community, covetous of the riches of the Amazon, could help rally political support to the regime. For
years, some Brazilian military officers have been warning of foreign intervention. Indeed, as far back as 1991 General Antenor de Santa Cruz Abreu, then chief of the Military Command of the Amazon, threatened to transform the region into a new Vietnam if developed countries tried to internationalize the Amazon. Subsequently, in 1993, U.S.-Guyanese combined military exercises near the Brazilian border provoked an angry response from many high-ranking Brazilian officers. 57

Failed states cause extinction Manwaring 05 (Max G., Retired U.S. Army colonel and an Adjunct Professor of International Politics at Dickinson College, VENEZUELAS HUGO CHVEZ, BOLIVARIAN SOCIALISM, AND ASYMMETRIC WARFARE, October 2005, pg. PUB628.pdf)
The Issue of State Failure. - President Chvez also understands that the process leading to state failure is the most dangerous long-term security challenge facing the global community today. The argument in general is that failing

and failed state status is the breeding ground for instability, criminality, insurgency, regional conflict, and terrorism. These conditions breed massive humanitarian disasters and major refugee flows. They can host evil networks of all kinds, whether they involve criminal business enterprise, narco-trafficking, or some form of ideological crusade such as Bolivarianismo. More specifically, these conditions spawn all kinds of things people in general do not like such as murder, kidnapping, corruption, intimidation, and destruction of infrastructure. These means of coercion and persuasion can spawn further human rights violations, torture, poverty, starvation, disease, the recruitment and use of child soldiers, trafficking in women and body parts, trafficking and proliferation of conventional weapons systems and WMD, genocide, ethnic

cleansing, warlordism, and criminal anarchy. At the same time, these actions are usually unconfined and spill over into regional syndromes of poverty, destabilization, and conflict.62 Perus Sendero Luminoso calls violent and destructive activities that facilitate the processes of state failure armed propaganda. Drug cartels operating throughout the Andean Ridge of South America and elsewhere call these activities business incentives. Chvez considers these actions to be steps
that must be taken to bring about the political conditions necessary to establish Latin American socialism for the 21st century.63 Thus, in addition to helping to provide wider latitude to further their tactical and operational objectives, state and nonstate actors strategic efforts are aimed at progressively lessening a targeted regimes credibility and capability in terms of its ability and willingness to govern and develop its national territory and society. Chvezs

intent is to focus his primary attack politically and psychologically on selected Latin American governments ability and right to govern. In that context, he understands that popular perceptions of
corruption, disenfranchisement, poverty, and lack of upward mobility limit the right and the ability of a given regime to conduct the business of the state. Until a given populace generally perceives that its government is dealing with these and other basic issues of political, economic, and social injustice fairly and effectively, instability and the threat of subverting or destroying such a government are real.64 But failing and failed states simply do not go away.

Virtually anyone can take advantage of such an unstable situation. The tendency is that the best motivated and best armed organization on the scene will control that instability. As a
consequence, failing and failed states become dysfunctional states, rogue states, criminal states, narco-states, or new peoples democracies. In connection with the creation of new peoples democracies, one can rest assured that Chvez

and his Bolivarian populist allies will be available to provide money, arms, and leadership at any given opportunity. And, of course, the longer
dysfunctional, rogue, criminal, and narco-states and peoples democracies persist, the more they and their associated problems endanger global security, peace, and prosperity.65

Democracy Impacts
Second is democracy summit invitation reverses Latin Anti-Americanism
Hakim 13 - president emeritus and senior fellow at the Inter-American Dialogue (Peter Hakim, The End of Chavez Reveals U.S. Missteps
April 5 2013, http://www.thedialogue.org/page.cfm?pageID=32&pubID=3285) MR Chvezs funeral is not the only reason for unease about Washingtons relations with Latin America. Cuban ruler Raul Castro, another determined U.S. adversary, was

recently elected to head CELAC, a new regional institution that brings together all Latin American and Caribbean nations. And Latin American heads of state have warned Washington that, unless Cuba is included in the hemisphere-wide Summit of the Americas, they would no longer participate. No, Latin Americans has not retreated from democratic rule, which is still the overwhelming regional norm. What they have given up on is the idea of collectively defending democratic practice in countries other than their own. Regional solidarity is now a higher priority than democracy. To be sure, the US still enjoys highly productive economic ties with most of Latin Americabut politically, it is drifting further and further apart from the region. Whether Washington can remake the relationship is in question. A sensible reform of U.S. immigration legislation would remove a critical obstacle. So would a more flexible approach to drug policy. Even more important , for Washington to regain clout in regional affairs, it must change its policy toward Cuba. Washington cannot continue to ignore the views of every Latin American and Caribbean government, all of whom stand against. U.S. efforts to isolate and sanction Cuba. Because U.S. policy is so extreme, no Latin America country is willing to criticize Cuba. Chvezs association with Cuba bought him some of that immunitywith his neighbors leaving him unaccountable for his violations of democracy and human rights. The US has a lot of work to do to prevent such immunity from spreading .

Plan K/ Future Summits

The embargo undercuts US credibility in Latin America and threatens future summits LeoGrande 13 professor in the Department of Government, School of Public Affairs at American University (William M. LeoGrande, The
Danger of Dependence: Cuba's Foreign Policy After Chavez World Politics Review, April 2 2013, http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/12840/the-danger-of-dependence-cubas-foreign-policy-after-chavez) MR

The best barometer of Cuba's overall diplomatic success is the annual vote in the U.N. General Assembly on a resolution condemning the U.S. embargo. Since the resolution was first introduced in 1992, the United States has lost every vote, 21 in all, by increasingly wide margins. In 2012, the tally was 188 for the resolution and 3 against.
The United States was joined in opposing the resolution by Israel, which itself has normal economic relations with Cuba, and Palau.

Nowhere has the turnabout in Cuba's diplomatic fortunes been more dramatic than in Latin America. In
the 1980s, a "lost decade" of economic stagnation and the failure of neoliberal economic reforms to alleviate poverty and inequality primed the region's electorates for a progressive alternative. Chvez's 1998 election in Venezuela marked the beginning of the rise of Latin Americas "new left." The first decade of the new century brought a wave of subsequent progressive victories, from the sedate social democracy of Chile's Ricardo Lagos, to the radical socialist populism of Chvez, Evo Morales in Bolivia and Rafael Correa in Ecuador. By the end of the decade, most

of Latin America had left-of-center presidents. Cuba benefited diplomatically from a solid phalanx of Latin American leaders demanding a change in U.S. policy toward Cuba. "There is no justification for that path that has us anchored in a Cold War overcome now for several decades," declared Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, one of Washington's closest allies in the region. Santos and Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff both declared they would skip
this wave of progressive victories. At the Fifth and Sixth Summits of the Americas in 2009 and 2012, Obama faced

the next summit if Cuba were excluded again. The 2012 summit, held in Cartagena, ended inconclusively, with no major
agreements and no final communiqu because the United States and Canada objected to extending an invitation for Cuba to attend the seventh summit in 2015. For Latin America, Washington's

interminable hostility toward Cuba symbolizes an anachronistic mentality of U.S. hegemony and intervention . Obama might have promised a "new beginning" in U.S. policy toward Cuba belies his good intentions.

relations with the hemisphere, but U.S.

No future summits unless the US reverses current Cuba policies

Miroff 12 Pulitzer prize winning journalist, covers Cuba for GlobalPost (Nick Miroff, America: Paying for it Global Post, April 16 2012,
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/americas/cuba/120416/americas-summit-paying-for-it) MR Forget the allegations of a costly encounter between the Secret Service and Colombian hookers. It was US

diplomacy that paid the

steepest price at this weekend's Summit of the Americas in Cartagena. While much of the media coverage narrowed in on
allegations that a dozen of the president's men had to be sent home for carousing with prostitutes prior to the arrival of US President Barack Obama, the real action took place once he got there. Obama

got an across-the-spectrum earful for the United States' insistence that Cuba can't attend the hemispheric meetings until it makes major democratic reforms. The meetings ended with a thud Sunday, lacking a final declaration or statement of consensus, because so many regional leaders said they won't go to the next Americas summit in Panama in 2015 unless Cuba can be there too. That the usual "yanqui" bashers like Bolivia's Evo Morales would criticize Washington's Cuba policy was hardly a surprise. Far more significant was the degree to which key American allies, like Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff and Colombian leader Juan Manuel Santos, the summit's host, were willing to go to bat for Havana. Never
mind that Latin America has gone through a period of blistering economic growth in recent years, thanks in large part to Washington-backed trade policies. Or that US commerce with the region has surged 46 percent since 2009, as Obama told fellow leaders. It

was the US trade embargo against Cuba not trade that they wanted to talk about. From left to right, Latin leaders backed Cuba with a unanimity that was unimaginable during the Cold War, or even as recently as a few years ago, when the US could count on conservative governments in the region to support its Cuba policies. This time, only
Canada's Stephen Harper sided with Washington in opposing Havana's presence at the gatherings, hosted by the Organization of American States (OAS), which kicked out Cuba in 1961. Obama sought to deflect the criticism by suggesting that Cuba and the octogenarian Castros were old news and not pertinent to the region's real problems. Sometimes those controversies date back to before I was born," said the US president, born two years after Fidel Castro's Cuban Revolution swept the island. But with

the American trade embargo against

the island still very much alive after 50 years, Latin leaders are tired of having to choose sides between Washington and Havana and hear their constituents complain of American bullying. Isolation, embargo, indifference and looking the other way have shown their inefficiency," Santos said Saturday in his remarks to open the summit, to hearty applause. It is an anachronism that keeps us anchored in a Cold War era. Santos, a moderate who nevertheless traveled to Havana last month to meet with Cuban President Raul Castro about the island's exclusion from the summit, said future gatherings without Cuba would be unacceptable.

Backlash to the US over the embargo threatens future summits

Cawthorne and Ellsworth 12 (Andrew Cawthorne and Brian Ellsworth Latin America rebels against Obama over Cuba Reuters,
April 15 2012, http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/15/us-americas-summit-idUSBRE83D0E220120415) MR

For the first time, conservative-led U.S. allies like Mexico and Colombia are throwing their weight behind the traditional demand of leftist governments that Cuba be invited to the next Summit of the Americas. Cuba was kicked out of the Organization of American States (OAS) a few years after Fidel Castro's 1959 revolution and has been kept out of its summits due mainly to U.S. opposition. But Latin American leaders are increasingly militant in opposing both Cuba's exclusion and the 50-year-old U.S. trade embargo on the Caribbean island. "The isolation, the embargo, the indifference, looking the other way, have been ineffective," Santos said. "I hope Cuba is at the next summit in three years." Santos, a major U.S. ally in the region who has relied on Washington for financial and military help to fight guerrillas and drug traffickers, has become vocal about Cuba's inclusion even though he also advocates for democratic reform by
Havana.

Embargo tanks future summits

Bouvier 12 PhD in Latin American Studies @ Berkeley (Virginia Bouvier, Summit of the Americas, US Institute of Peace, 2012,
http://www.usip.org/publications/summit-the-americas) MR

The exclusion of Cuba has profound implications for the summit process, the OAS, and the hemisphere. Earlier this week, Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa announced his decision to boycott the summit. He has underscored that the exclusion of Cuba does not represent the consensus of the hemispheres leaders, who agreed at the last summit not to exclude Cuba from future summits. Failure to design a satisfactory resolution to this issue could easily torpedo future summits .

Compromise measures could solve

Feinberg 10 Professor of International Political Economy @ UC-San Diego (Richard Feinberg, Summitry in the Americas: The End of Mass
Multilateralism? March 20 2010, http://www.focal.ca/pdf/summit_Feinberg_summitry%20Americas%20end%20mass%20multilateralism_March%202010.pdf) MR Finally, in the realm of political contention, there remains the issue of Cuba. At the OAS General Assembly in June 2009, the resolutions under which Cuba was suspended from the OAS in 1962 were revoked, but the

issue of Cuban participation in the OAS and by proxy, in interAmerican summitry was temporarily shelved. The U.S. maintained that the active presence of an authoritarian state would contradict the basic tenets of the OAS and the Inter-American Democracy Charter. The Cuban government professed disinterest in resuming its OAS seat. Yet, the Cuba issue, which preoccupied diplomats at the Port of Spain Summit, continues to fester . So long as the Cuban government eschews domestic reforms, its presence at inter-American summits remains problematic. The approval of Summit
communiqus, whose language will inevitably contradict Cuban practices, would raise severe credibility questions for both summitry itself and the Cuban government. But compromise measures that

allow partial Cuban participation can be envisioned. For example, Cuba could be invited to join in specific initiatives where Cuban domestic policies are congruent with the purposes of that issue-specific process. Issues where Cuban participation could be constructive might include social services, energy and biomass, counter-narcotics and counter-terrorism.
To prevent the Cuba issue from again becoming disruptive, such a compromise should be negotiated prior to the 2012 Cartagena Summit. It would also help

if Washington were to begin, in earnest, to join the hemispheric consensus and move toward establishing more normal bilateral relations with Havana .

Economic Focus K/
Economic focus is key boosts energy cooperation
Farnsworth 13 - vice president of the Americas Society/Council of the Americas. While serving in the State Department and White House,
he was involved in planning the first two Summits of the Americas, in 1994 and 1998 (Eric Farnsworth, Reinvent the Summit of the Americas, 2013, http://www.as-coa.org/articles/reinvent-summit-americas) MR

With an economically distressed United States unwilling or unable to advance a compelling agenda in Cartagena, and much of the region less dependent on the United States than before, more traditional, divisive issues in hemispheric affairs came to the fore. In the end, the 2012 summit failed to produce even a watered-down leaders communiqu. Washingtons Quandary Where does the hemisphere go from here? The next summit is to be hosted by Panama in 2015. Several leaders in the region have vowed that there will be no further summits without Cuban participation . They will put
Washington in a quandary if a nondemocratic Cuba is invited. The Summit of the Americas was specifically developed to support and promote democracy as the only legitimate form of governance in the Americas. Even though the promise of the first summits has been squandered, it is the one forum that links the United States, Canada, Latin America, and the Caribbean together at the leaders level. A summit that included the leader of a nondemocratic Cuba would repudiate the core of the panregional agenda, which Washington could not easily accept. But should

the United States stay away in protest, it would starkly signal that Washington had been outmaneuvered in its own hemisphere. Either way, the United States would lose stature, because it has historically been the chief proponent
of the democracy agenda. Of course, this is precisely the reason the matter was pursued by a number of leaders before the Cartagena summit, and likely will be again. It is time therefore to reconsider the utility of hemispheric summits. The idea of a united hemisphere no longer exists.

Political consensus has broken down, and with it, the summit process. It is difficult to project a scenario whereby consensus is restored in the near term. Without announcing an end to the hemisphere-wide Summit of the Americas process, like-minded leaders can still work to rebuild a framework for hemispheric relations among those nations that do share common values and remain interested in working together toward a common agenda. One way to do this would be to investigate the
idea of subregional meetings with like-minded nations, perhaps also including extraregional nations from both the Atlantic and the Pacific (existing and pending free trade partners in both regions would be logical guests to consider). There is no obligation, for example, to include the Venezuelan-led Bolivarian Alliance for the People of our Nations in a subregional meeting or summit; after all, summits occur regularly in Latin America without the United States, Canada, and others. The Union of South American Nations meets regularly without including Mexico, Central America, or the Caribbean. At the same time, Latin America regularly meets with Spain and Portugal in the Ibero-American process.

Summits should return to an economic focus with substantive benefits for participating nations that cannot be achieved separately. There must be concrete, positive results that flow from these meetings. The world does not need any more talking shops. Areas crying out for more active hemispheric cooperation include trade and investment relations, financial coordination, energy, and agriculture, among
Other examples abound. others.

Summits K/ Democracy
Summits are crucial to modern diplomacy key to threat reduction
Feinberg 10 Professor of International Political Economy (Richard Feinberg, Summitry in the Americas: The End of Mass
Multilateralism? Canadian Foundation for the Americas, March 2010, http://www.focal.ca/pdf/summit_Feinberg_summitry%20Americas%20end%20mass%20multilateralism_March%202010.pdf) MR

Summits among large numbers of leaders that convene on a periodic basis are an innovative form of diplomacy. This new diplomacy, as it has been labelled by the Secretary General of the Ibero-American Summits, Enrique Iglesias, dates just from the 1970s, with the inauguration of the Group of Seven (G-7) industrial countries.1 This new diplomacy was only made possible by modern air
travel. Historically, summits were typically one-off, specific affairs convened to end wars or sign major treaties, and leaders would spend weeks travelling laboriously by land or sea to reach their summit destinations. So we

are very much in the early stages of modern summitry, and we are learning by doing. This policy paper will explore some of the many lessons learned during the five Summits of the Americas and two special Summits that have been held since the inaugural Miami Summit in 1994. Skepticism regarding the value of summits has become widespread. A common view is that summits are largely photo ops for leaders and that their lofty communiqus are soon forgotten, leaving a wide gap between aspirations and implementation. With each passing year, there are more and more summits global, regional and sub-regional with overlapping mixes of countries and agendas, crowding the calendars of leaders and resulting in summit fatigue. These frustrations notwithstanding, summits are here to stay. Gatherings of state leaders respond to our era of globalization and interdependence, when many common problems can only be addressed through international co-operation, and where serious problems in one country can readily spill over and cause problems for many states. Summits also respond to the globalization of business and of civil society. Summits respond to a world interconnected by the internet and telecommunications, where citizens increasingly recognize that their problems require supra-national responses and hence look for international solutions. More generally, skeptics argue that international
agreements add little value, that governments only sign agreements that obligate them to follow principles to which they already adhere or that they cynically intend to ignore.2 Yet, international

agreements can establish norms of behaviour that states will hesitate to violate; the agreements alter states cost-benefit analyses of potential behaviours. Furthermore, and perhaps most importantly, international agreements and the institutions that embody them can alter the balance of contending forces within countries. For example, human rights activists have looked to organs of the Organization of American
States (OAS) to force their governments and judicial systems to honour inter-American norms.3

Summits are the lynchpin of democracy

Feinberg 10 Professor of International Political Economy (Richard Feinberg, Summitry in the Americas: The End of Mass
Multilateralism? Canadian Foundation for the Americas, March 2010, http://www.focal.ca/pdf/summit_Feinberg_summitry%20Americas%20end%20mass%20multilateralism_March%202010.pdf) MR Despite some serious shortcomings, inter-American summitry has served a number of valuable purposes and has made contributions to the welfare of the peoples of the region. Analytically, one must be careful regarding attribution: often a policy initiative or trend has multiple causes, and summitry may be part of a wider stream of contributions. With such cautions in mind, inter-American summitry has served these functions: Adding

legitimacy to democratic norms and values.1. When modern summitry began in 1994, that democracy is the only legitimate form of government in the region. Importantly, the 2001 Quebec Summit gave impetus to the InterAmerican Democracy Charter, signed by foreign ministers in Lima, Peru, on Sept. 11, 2001. Typically, international relations are understood as treating interactions among states. However, it is in fact often about relations among like-minded groups within different countries, as they seek to lend support to their brethren in their struggles against domestic foes. The assertion by summitry of the hegemony of the democratic ideal, therefore, lends support to democratic forces within member states. Where democracy is under threat, the pronouncements of summitry provide the norms for collective action in defence of democracy. Where democracy is gaining ground, summitry helps to lock in those gains.
many countries were just emerging from the horrors of authoritarian military rule. Summits have underscored

Summit K/ Stability
Engagement through the Summit boosts hemispheric cooperation
Cochez 12 - Panamas ambassador to the Organization of American States (Guillermo Cochez, Summit of the Americas: Is it worth it?,
TICO Times, 2012, http://www.ticotimes.net/Opinion/Previous-perspectives/Summit-of-the-Americas-Is-it-worth-it) MR

Some people wonder why there are so many international meetings of the regions leaders. They say that
instead of traveling so much, the presidents and prime ministers should buckle down to work in their own countries; that every time a country signs an international agreement, it gives up a piece of its sovereignty. But a

world that is increasingly globalized demands increased interconnection. When the presidents and prime ministers of the Americas meet face to face to discuss, debate and take concerted action as they will do April 14-15 at the Sixth Summit of the Americas, in Cartagena, Colombia they strengthen the ties that bind us, to the benefit of the citizens of the hemisphere. The Summit of the Americas is the only forum that brings together the heads of state and government of the countries of the Organization of American States. The summit, like the Panama Canal, represents a vital, strategic path of connection. When they meet in Cartagena, our
leaders will be following in the wake of a process under way since 1994. The First Summit of the Americas, held in the U.S. city of Miami, Florida, began a new era in the region, establishing a pact for development and prosperity rooted in democracy. Through

this forum,

countries have discussed and debated a range of political issues and shared challenges, always seeking to
preserve and strengthen the hemispheres community of democracies. Despite all the current political differences among OAS member countries, this central purpose that of deepening democracy has been maintained. Beyond the specific issues that will be discussed in Cartagena under the theme Connecting the Americas: Partners for Prosperity, the sixth summit will reaffirm that original commitment. Since the first summit, this process has unfolded throughout the Americas. The Summit on Sustainable Development took place in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia, in 1996, followed by the Second Summit of the Americas in Santiago, Chile, in 1998; the Third Summit in Quebec, Canada, in 2001; a Special Summit in Monterrey, Mexico, in 2004; the Fourth Summit in Mar del Plata, Argentina, in 2005; and the Fifth Summit in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, in 2009. Besides

strengthening international relations, these meetings have produced real and lasting results, ranging from the adoption of the Inter-American Democratic Charter to the launch of the Inter-American Social Protection Network. Through the summits, the countries of the Americas have stepped up cooperation to fight terrorism, drugs and corruption. While one of the original goals, the Free Trade Area of the Americas, did not come to pass, the summit process intensified regional dialogue on trade, leading to such free trade agreements as the recent Panama-U.S. Free Trade Agreement. The summits of the Americas have helped guide the actions of the OAS and other multilateral organizations in
the region, which are committed to carrying out the viable mechanisms and initiatives adopted by the states, with the primary aim of

strengthening democracy in the hemisphere. The OAS, through its Summits of the Americas Secretariat, oversees the
implementation of mandates and promotes follow-through with summit commitments.

OAS K/ Stability
OAS key to dispute settlement early-warning tech
Welch 12 CPA/IIGG Research Associate (Emma Welch, Sustaining the Peace in Latin America: Regional and International Efforts Council
on Foreign Relations, May 16 2012, IIGGMeetingNote_SustainingthePeaceinLatinAmerica.pdf) MR The primary regional organization in Latin America is the Organization of American States (OAS), which has

an evolving role in peacebuilding and conflict management. The OAS was founded in 1948 to promote peaceful relations among member states, and codified the primacy of democracy in its guiding principles in 2001. It maintains several dispute settlement mechanisms such as the good offices of the secretary general and special missionsthat the organization has employed to successfully mediate territorial disputes between Guatemala and Belize, Honduras and Nicaragua, and Guyana and Suriname. The OAS is also in the nascent stages of developing an early-warning system, which will expand its conflict management capacities.

OAS is key to hemispheric stability

Herz 8 Director, Institute of International Relations, Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (Monica Herz, DOES THE ORGANISATION OF
AMERICAN STATES MATTER? Institute of International Relations, April 2008, WP34.2.pdf) MR In this new context does First, I point out that the

the OAS matter? Two different paths are taken in the remaining part of this article to answer this question. OAS has developed two new roles in norm generation: a leading role in supporting the confidence-building agenda in the hemisphere; and a central role in generating the hemispheric democratic paradigm that associates security and democracy, allowing the organisation to have an active role in preventing intra-state conflicts. In addition, the OAS remains an important pillar of the norm of peaceful solution of disputes, which is an historical legacy of previous periods. Insofar as the states participate in norm construction and behaviour is changed, one can see these norms functioning as preventive diplomacy mechanisms. Secondly, I will show that the OAS prevented a number of international and domestic disputes from turning into violent conflict and was essential in diffusing several crises.

Arms Race Coming Now

Latin America is ramping up arms procurement
Munks 9 Americas Analyst, IHS Jane's (Robert Munks, Could war erupt in arms-spree LatAm? BBC, September 15 2009,
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8256686.stm) MR

Is Latin America gearing up for conflict? Some regional commentators certainly fear that a handful of countries are teetering on the edge of a full-blown arms race they can ill afford - either financially or diplomatically. That fear has been stoked in the past week by the coincidental announcement of two major procurement programmes. Firstly, Brazil confirmed on 7 September that it will buy four Scorpene attack submarines from France, and will build 50 EC725 transport helicopters under licence. It has also opened negotiations with French company Dassault for a large order of Rafale fighter aircraft. Then Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez returned last week from a successful shopping trip to Moscow, with T72 main battle tanks and an unknown quantity of air defence systems in the bag. Both countries are ramping up military expenditure to levels not seen in decades.

Latin American arms race on the brink

Catholic Review 10 (Tanks, jets, automatic weapons: Scenario for conflict in Latin America The Catholic Review, January 4 2010,
http://catholicreview.org/article/generations/young-catholic-news/tanks-jets-automatic-weapons-scenario-for-conflict-in-latin-america) MR

Spending on arms in the region ballooned from $24 billion in 2003 to $47 billion in 2008. From Venezuela to Brazil to Chile, countries were purchasing tanks, fighter jets and other military equipment better suited to waging war on their neighbors
than fighting domestic threats, such as drug trafficking and organized crime. An agreement between the United States and Colombia to allow U.S. military personnel to use seven bases in the Andean nation further exacerbated tensions in the region. Catholic bishops in at least two countries have warned about the imminent threat of drug-related violence, but little has been said about the military buildup. Peru has called for a halt to what it terms an arms race in South America, even while it negotiates the purchase of tanks from China. Some analysts say arms race is too simple a term for the weapons purchases in the region. An arms race implies that everybody is buying weapons because they want to protect themselves from each other, said Michael Shifter, vice president for policy at the nonprofit Inter-American Dialogue in Washington and a professor at Georgetown University. But the regions leaders are currently buying weapons for various reasons. After economic crises in the 1980s and 1990s, many Latin American countries saw unprecedented growth in the past decade and can afford to replace obsolete equipment, said Adam Isacson of the Washington-based Center for International Policy. Nevertheless, Isacson notes that most

of the weapons being purchased, from tanks to fighter jets to automatic weapons, are for scenarios of interstate conflict . Underlying the purchases is profound mistrust and political tension among Latin American nations, partly because globalization of economics,
technology and migration spurs countries to defend their national interests, Shifter told Catholic News Service.

Plan K/ LA Relations
Poor relations with Cuba are destroying US leadership in Latin America
Clement, 13 http://www.ciponline.org/images/uploads/publications/0413_RapprochementCuba_TampaConference.pdf RappRochement
with cuba Tampa, Florida March 23, 2013 A Report by Joshua Clement April 2013//JH As the last panelist to address the audience, Colonel Larry Wilkerson closed the conference. Colonel Wilkerson, a respected military officer, told the audience that Cuba

is not a threat to the United States. Most people in the Pentagon believe that our policy towards Cuba is stupid. They (the Cuban government) are not promoting revolution; they are promoting healthcare. Wilkerson argued that Cubas foreign policy is to deploy doctors around the world to assist developing nations.
He applauded the small islands success in providing healthcare and education to its citizens. Moreover, he argued that there can be positive cooperation between the two countries. With

the majority of governments in the Western Hemisphere threatening not to attend the next Summit of the Americas unless Cuba is invited, as well as the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) recently nominating and electing Cuban President Raul Castro as its president, Wilkerson said, We (the United States) are becoming an isolated party in our own hemisphere! Is this what we
want? Colonel Wilkerson said that moral courage is needed in the White House if there is to be any change in policy towards Cuba. So far, according to Wilkerson, the Obama Administration has shown little moral courage. He is hopeful, however, that Secretary of State John Kerry and Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel will contribute positively to the Obama Administrations second term. If

the U.S. is to avoid being a pariah in its own hemisphere, the executive branch must be the first to promote a policy between the two countries that is based on cooperation and a respect for human rights. President Obama can
start by removing Cuba from the State Sponsors of Terrorism list. As Colonel Wilkerson made clear in his lecture, the Cuban government is not promoting revolution or contributing to terrorist organizations. Removing Cuba from the State Sponsors of Terrorism list would make it more difficult for elected officials, such as Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Mario Diaz-Balart and Bob Menendez to block normalizing relations with Cuba. The panelists encouraged Americans to take up the battle by writing their state representatives, asking them to make engagement with Cuba a priority. With a surge of interest in establishing a dialogue with Cuba at the state level, a strong message will be sent to the President.

Modifying embargo regulations promotes effective engagement and significantly improves our international credibility throughout LA Huddleston and Pascual 09 *Visiting Fellow, Foreign Policy; **Vice President and Director, Foreign Policy (Vicki and Carlos, CUBA:
A New policy of Critical and Constructive Engagement, The Brookings Institution, April 2009, http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/reports/2009/4/cuba/0413_cuba.pdf)//Bwang

U.S. policy toward Cuba should advance the democratic aspirations of the Cuban people and strengthen U.S. credibility throughout the hemisphere. Our nearly 50-year old policy toward Cuba has failed on both counts: it has resulted in a downward spiral of U.S. influence on the island and has left the United States isolated in the hemisphere and beyond. Our Cuba policy has become a bellwether, indicating the extent to which the United States will act in partnership with the region or unilaterallyand ineffectually. i nevitably, strategic contact and dialogue with the Cuban government will be necessary if the United States seeks to engage the Cuban people. This paper proposes a new
goal for U.S. policy to - ward Cuba: to support the emergence of a Cuban state where the Cuban people determine the polit - ical and economic future of their country through democratic means. A great lesson of democracy is that it cannot be imposed; it must come from within; the type of government at the helm of the islands future will depend on Cubans. Our policy should therefore encompass the political, economic, and diplomatic tools to enable the Cuban people to engage in and direct the politics of their country. This policy will advance the interests of the United States in seeking stable relationships based on common hemispheric values that pro - mote the well-being of each individual and the growth of civil society. To

engage the Cuban gov - ernment and Cuban people effectively, the United States will

need to engage with other govern - ments, the private sector, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). i n so doing, U.S. policy
toward Cuba would reflect the hemispheres and our own desire to encourage the Cuban govern - ment to adopt international standards of democ - racy, human rights, and transparency. Engagement does not mean approval of the Cu - ban governments policies, nor should it indicate a wish to control internal developments in Cuba; legitimate changes in Cuba will only come from the actions of Cubans.

i f the United States is to play a positive role in Cubas future, it must not indulge in hostile rhetoric nor obstruct a dialogue on issues that would advance democracy, justice, and human rights as well as our broader national interests. p erversely, the policy of seeking to iso - late Cuba, rather than achieving its objective, has

contributed to undermining the well-being of the Cuban people and to eroding U.S. influence in Cuba and l atin America. i t has reinforced the Cuban governments power over its citizens by in - creasing their dependence on it for every
aspect of their livelihood. By slowing the flow of ideas and information, we have unwittingly helped Cuban state security delay Cubas political and economic evolution toward a more open and representa - tive government. And, by too tightly embracing Cubas brave dissidents, we have provided the Cu - ban authorities with an excuse to denounce their legitimate efforts to build a more open society. The Cuban r evolution of 1959 is a fact of histo - ry that cannot be removed or unlived, but, over time, Cuba will change. As the Cuban people become inexorably linked to the region and the world, they will themselves come to play a larger role in the way they are governed. Mortality and timenot U.S. sanctionshave already begun the process of change. A new generation of Cu - ban leaders will replace the Castro brothers and those who fought in the Sierra Maestra. Although Cuba is already undergoing a process of change, the Bush administrations decision to cling to out -

Cuba policy should be a pressing issue for the Obama administration because it offers a unique opportunity for the president to transform our rela - tions with the hemisphere. Even a slight shift away from hostility to engagement will permit the United States to work more closely with the region to ef - fectively advance a common agenda toward Cuba. By announcing a policy of critical and constructive engagement at the April Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago, the president can prove that he has been listening to the region. He can under - line this commitment by removing all restrictions on travel and remittances on Cuban Americans, and engaging in dialogue with the regime, as prom - ised during his campaign. By reciprocally improv - ing our diplomatic relations with Cuba, we will en - hance our understanding of the island, its people, and its leaders. However, while these measures will promote understanding, improve the lives of
moded tactics of harsh rhetoric and confrontation alienated leaders across the region. people on the island, and build support for a new relation - ship between our countries, they are insufficient to ensure the changes needed to result in normal dip - lomatic relations over time. i

f the president is to advance U.S. interests and principles, he will need a new policy and a long- term strategic vision for U.S. relations with Cuba. i f he is prepared to discard the failed policy of regime change and adopt one of critical and con - structive engagement, he and his administration will lay the foundations for a new approach to - ward Cuba and the l atin America. l ike his pre - decessors, p resident Obama has the authority to substantially modify embargo regulations in order to advance a policy of engagement that would broaden and deepen contacts with the Cuban people and their government. He has the popular supportdomestic and internationalto engage Cuba, and, by so doing, to staunch our diminishing influence on the island and recapture the high road in our relations with the hemisphere.

Ending the embargo is key to US leadership and cooperation throughout Latin America.
White, 13 http://www.ciponline.org/research/entry/after-chavez-chance-to-rethink-relations-with-cuba After Chvez, a Chance to Rethink
Relations With Cuba NY Times, March 7, 2013 | Article By Robert White//JH

An end to the Cuba embargo would send a powerful signal to all of Latin America that the United States wants a new, warmer relationship with democratic forces seeking social change throughout the Americas. I joined the State Department as a Foreign Service officer in the 1950s and chose to serve in Latin America in the 1960s. I was
inspired by President John F. Kennedys creative response to the revolutionary fervor then sweeping Latin America. The 1959 Cuban revolution, led by the charismatic Fidel Castro, had inspired revolts against the cruel dictatorships and corrupt pseudodemocracies that had dominated the region since the end of Spanish and Portuguese rule in the 19th century. Kennedy had a charisma of his own, and it captured the imaginations of leaders who wanted democratic change, not violent revolution. Kennedy reacted to the threat of continental insurrection by creating the Alliance for Progress, a kind of Marshall Plan for the hemisphere that was calculated to achieve the same kind of results that saved Western Europe from Communism. He pledged billions of dollars to this effort. In hindsight, it may have been overly ambitious, even nave, but Kennedys focus on Latin America rekindled the promise of the Good Neighbor Policy of Franklin D. Roosevelt and transformed the whole concept of inter-American relations. Tragically, after Kennedys assassination in 1963, the ideal of the Alliance for Progress crumbled and la noche mas larga the longest night began for the proponents of Latin American democracy. Military regimes flourished, democratic governments withered, moderate political and civil leaders were labeled Communists, rights of free speech and assembly were curtailed and human dignity crushed, largely because the United States abandoned all standards save that of anti-Communism. During my Foreign Service career, I did what I could to oppose policies that supported dictators and closed off democratic alternatives. In 1981, as the ambassador to El Salvador, I refused a demand by the secretary of state, Alexander M. Haig Jr., that I use official channels to cover up the Salvadoran militarys responsibility for the murders of four American churchwomen. I was fired and forced out of the Foreign Service. The Reagan administration, under the illusion that Cuba was the power driving the Salvadoran revolution, turned its policy over to the Pentagon and C.I.A., with predictable results. During the 1980s the United States helped expand the Salvadoran military, which was dominated by uniformed assassins. We armed them, trained them and covered up their crimes. After our counterrevolutionary efforts failed to end the Salvadoran conflict, the Defense Department asked its research institute, the RAND Corporation, what had gone wrong. RAND analysts found that United States policy makers

had refused to accept the obvious truth that the insurgents were rebelling against social injustice and state terror. As a result, we pursued a policy unsettling to ourselves, for ends humiliating to the Salvadorans and at a cost disproportionate to any conventional conception of the national interest. Over the subsequent quarter-century, a series of profound political, social and economic changes have undermined the traditional power bases in Latin America and, with them, longstanding regional institutions like the Organization of American States. The organization, which is headquartered in Washington and which excluded Cuba in 1962, was seen as irrelevant by Mr. Chvez. He promoted the creation of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States which excludes the United States and Canada as an alternative. At a regional meeting that included Cuba and excluded the United States, Mr. Chvez said that the most positive thing for the independence of our continent is that we meet alone without the hegemony of empire. Mr. Chvez was masterful at manipulating Americas antagonism toward Fidel Castro as a rhetorical stick with which to attack the United States as an imperialist aggressor, an enemy of progressive change, interested mainly in treating Latin America as a vassal continent, a source of cheap commodities and labor. Like its predecessors, the Obama administration has given few signs that it has grasped the magnitude of these changes or cares about their consequences. After President Obama took office in 2009, Latin Americas leading statesman at the time, Luiz Incio Lula da Silva, then the president of Brazil, urged Mr. Obama to normalize relations with Cuba. Lula, as he is universally known, correctly identified our Cuba policy as the chief stumbling block to renewed ties with Latin America, as it had been since the very early years of the Castro regime. After the failure of the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, Washington set out to accomplish by stealth and economic strangulation what it had failed to do by frontal attack. But the clumsy mix of covert action and porous boycott succeeded primarily in bringing shame on the United States and turning Mr. Castro into a folk hero. And even now, despite the relaxing of travel restrictions and Ral Castros announcement that he will retire in 2018, the implacable hatred of many within the Cuban exile community continues. The fact that two of the three Cuban-American members of the Senate Marco Rubio of Florida and Ted Cruz of Texas are rising stars in the Republican Party complicates further the potential for a recalibration of Cuban-American relations. (The third member, Senator Robert Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, is the new chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, but his power has been weakened by a continuing ethics controversy.) Are there any other examples in the history of diplomacy where the leaders of a small, weak nation can prevent a great power from acting in its own best interest merely by staying alive? The reelection of President Obama, and the death of Mr. Chvez, give America a chance to reassess the irrational hold on our imaginations that Fidel Castro has exerted for five decades. The president and his new secretary of state, John Kerry, should quietly reach out to Latin American leaders like President Juan Manuel Santos of Colombia and Jos Miguel Insulza, secretary general of the Organization of American States. The

message should be simple: The president is prepared to show some flexibility on Cuba and asks your help. Such a simple request could transform the Cuban issue from a bilateral problem into a multilateral challenge. It would then be up to Latin Americans to devise a policy that would help Cuba achieve a sufficient measure of democratic change to justify its reintegration into a hemisphere composed entirely of elected governments. If, however, our present policy paralysis continues, we will soon see the emergence of two rival camps, the United States versus Latin America. While Washington would continue to enjoy friendly relations with individual countries like Brazil, Mexico and Colombia, the vision of Roosevelt and Kennedy of a hemisphere of partners cooperating in matters of common concern would be reduced to a historical footnote.

Solvency/Inherency

1AC
Obama wont lift the embargo, domestic politics are his priority
Sanders 12 (Ronald, consultant for the Jamaica Observer and former Caribbean diplomat, Decisions on Cuba rooted in politics, not
principle," 4/22/12, http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/columns/Decisions-on-Cuba-rooted-in-politics--not-principle_11294391, MDM) US President Barack Obama

vetoed Cuba's attendance at this month's Summit of the Americas in Colombia for domestic political reasons. He was not alone in applying domestic considerations. Every other hemispheric leader adopted a position on Cuba that related to his/her own political concerns. Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper
supported Obama in denying an invitation not only to the Colombia Summit but also to the next one in Panama in 2015 because he had an eye on the importance of maintaining a close link to the US. The US is Canada's biggest trading partner, and to preserve that position, the Canadian Government needs to be seen by all parties in the US as supportive of US policies. Of course, unlike other countries in the Western Hemisphere, including all who now call for Cuba's participation in the Summit of the Americas, Canada has always maintained diplomatic relations with Cuba, and trade has continued briskly between the two nations. Therefore, notwithstanding Fidel Castro's lambasting of Stephen Harper after he criticised Cuba's human rights record, there are more than enough economic benefits for Cuba in its relations with Canada for the Castro Government not to allow this event to mar the overall association between the two countries. As for the Caribbean

countries, almost all of them now benefit from Cuba's scholarship programme for their young people to study at Cuban universities, as well as Cuba's programme of supplying doctors and other forms of technical assistance. They
know that the Cuban Government provides this assistance at great cost to itself. The resources could be used to address serious problems within Cuba, particularly shortages of food and medicines. They also know that Cuba is now no military threat to the United States and has no interest in military adventurism anywhere in the hemisphere. Further, despite that fact, Cuba still remains on the US State Department's list of "state sponsors of terrorism". Caribbean governments also know that this listing is without foundation and should be abandoned. In

calling for Cuba's inclusion in meetings of the Summit of the Americas in the face of opposition from the US Government Caribbean governments are paying back Cuba for its generous assistance to them. Of
course, Barack Obama is correct when he makes the following observation about Caribbean governments and the relatively new "democratic" governments in Latin America: "I am sometimes puzzled by the degree to which countries that themselves have undergone enormous transformations, that have known the oppression of dictatorships or have found themselves on the wrong side of the ruling elite, and have suffered for it, why we would ignore that same principle here." It is obvious that Obama, the man, is concerned

that "Cuba has not yet moved to democracy, has not yet observed basic human rights". It is the same concern that Stephen Harper
identified. There is validity in the unease, and the Cuban Government must do more and do it more openly to end its regime of intolerance to dissent and its resistance to political change. Other countries in the hemisphere, including all the nations of the Caribbean, have learned to accommodate political dissent, to respond to demands of workers, to hold elections, and to change governments by peaceful means. The

question that always arises on this issue is whether Cuba should be encouraged to undergo the required change by isolation or by engagement. The US has chosen isolation through the trade embargo
and resisting Cuba's attendance at the Americas Summit. The matter of membership of the Organisation of American States (OAS) is no longer relevant since the Castro Government has described the organisation as "an unburied corpse". But that is more bluster on the Cuban Government's part than an accurate assessment of the OAS. The organisation is now more concerned with democratic governance in its member states than it used to be, and the Cuban Government would find it difficult to measure up to the criteria for securing and maintaining membership. Neither Obama nor Harper has sought to defend their denial of Cuba's participation in the Americas Summit, while they engage with China in several fora despite the latter's human rights record. Yet, if they argue that engagement with China is essential to promoting change, it should be equally necessary in Cuba's case. Hence, they

should drop their objection to Cuba's participation in the Summit and use it as a forum for setting and applying principles to which all countries, including Cuba, would have to adhere. But Obama, the president of the US who is seeking another term in office, has to deal with carrying the
State of Florida in the upcoming Presidential election. Florida, where many influential anti-Castro, Cuban-Americans live, is important to winning the Presidency. Given the strong anti-Castro feeling there, Obama could not afford to offend the Florida electorate by agreeing to the Cuban Government's participation at the Colombia Summit, nor could he signal now that he would agree to its attendance in Panama in 2015. Like every other leader, domestic politics dictates international policy, even when it leads to actions that are plainly unproductive. A clear indication that anti-Castro sentiment is very much alive and well in Florida is the passage by the legislature last March of a Bill designed to punish the Castro Government by restricting state and local governments from signing procurement contracts with any companies that do business with Cuba. The constitutionality of such a bill has been questioned since "only the federal government (and Congress) has the legislative competence to conduct foreign policy and impose sanctions". But it would be a foolishly daring Obama who would veto the Bill.

Domestic politics in the US trumps a more sensible policy of engagement with Cuba. The crazy thing is that it

suits the Castro regime since they can continue to blame the "Yankee imperialists" for the deprived conditions
the Cuban people suffer. For the Cuban leadership, as for all other hemispheric leaders, the imperatives of domestic politics triumph.

Obama has the authority to modify Cuban embargo as long as he gives a justification
Ashby 13 Senior Research Fellow at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs; served in the U.S. Commerce Departments International Trade
Administration as Director of the Office of Mexico and the Caribbean and as acting Deputy Assistant Secretary of Commerce for the Western Hemisphere; a counsel with the international law firm Dentons; he has PhD, JD and MBA degrees (Dr. Timothy, Preserving Stability in Cuba After Normalizing Relations with the United States The Importance of Trading with State-Owned Enterprises, Council of Hemispheric Affairs, 3/29/13, http://www.coha.org/preserving-stability-in-cuba-timothy-ashby/)//Bwang

The complete dismantling of the Cuban economic embargo will undoubtedly require congressional legislation; however, the president has broad powers to modify policy towards Cuba, particularly in an emergency situation that could affect U.S. national security. [15] For example, imports of Cuban origin goods are prohibited under the Cuban Asset Control Regulations (CACRS) except as specifically authorized by the Secretary of the Treasury by means of regulations, rulings, instructions, licenses or otherwise. *16+ Such authority could allow the president to argue for the modification of 31 C.F.R. 204s complete prohibition on the importation of Cuban goods by stating that Cuban exports to the United States help the Cuban people by creating employment and thereby maintaining the islands social stability. Considering the domestic political constituency and the political obduracy of
U.S. Congress, a more realistic presidential rationale for allowing Cuban imports from all types of enterprises could be the protection of U.S. borders during an era of grave concerns about homeland security. Some policy analysts suggest that bilateral trade with Cuba should be restricted to businesses and individuals engaged in certifiably independent (i.e. non-state) economic activity. [17] While well-intentioned, such a policy would likely have a negligible impact on Cubas economic development and fails to recognize that commercial enterprises that the U.S. government would classify as SOEs are actually co-ops or other types of quasi-independent entities that are in the early stages of privatization. Restrictions such as this also fail to address larger national and regional security concerns which are the primary responsibility of the president. Although

ultimately the Cuban people must freely choose their own political and economic systems, President Obama should be seen as having legal authority to support the transition taking place on the island by opening U.S. markets to Cuban imports. Normalized bilateral trade will benefit the Cuban people and help to provide economic and social stability that is in turn vital to U.S. national and regional security.

Now is key to repeal confluence of factors give engagement momentum in both countries
LeoGrande 13 professor in the Department of Government, School of Public Affairs at American University (William M. LeoGrande,
The Danger of Dependence: Cuba's Foreign Policy After Chavez World Politics Review, April 2 2013, http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/12840/the-danger-of-dependence-cubas-foreign-policy-after-chavez) MR In his first public statement after assuming Cuba's presidency in 2006, Ral Castro

held out an olive branch to Washington, declaring his readiness to sit down and negotiate the differences between the two countries. Obama came to office in 2009 declaring that U.S. policy toward Cuba amounted to 50 years of failure and that it was "time to try something new." The stage appeared set for a tectonic shift in U.S.-Cuban relations, long locked in a state of perpetual hostility. Obama took some
early steps that augured well. In April 2009, he ended restrictions on Cuban-American remittances and family travel and subsequently eased regulations limiting cultural and academic exchange. At Washington's initiative, the United States and Cuba resumed bilateral talks on migration, suspended by President George W. Bush in 2004. The two governments also began discussions on other issues of mutual interest, such as Coast Guard cooperation and drug interdiction. But the momentum more pressing foreign

in Washington soon dissipated in the face of policy priorities, opposition from Congress, even among some Democrats, and resistance from an inertial State Department bureaucracy more comfortable with the familiar policy of the past -- its failure notwithstanding -- than the risk of trying something new. As a former senior State Department official explained, high-visibility
foreign policy changes of this magnitude only happen if the president demands that they happen, and Obama's attention was focused elsewhere. In December 2009, Cuba's

arrest of Alan Gross, a consultant for the U.S. Agency for International Development's "democracy promotion" programs, brought all progress to a halt. At the end of Obama's first term, relations with Cuba were not much better than at the start. Obama is known to be frustrated by the impasse and willing to make another effort to break through it in his second term. With no need for the president to worry about re-election, and the Cuban American community embracing more-moderate policies, domestic politics pose less of an obstacle than at any time

since the end of the Cold War. Senior members of Obama's foreign policy team, including John Kerry at the State Department and Chuck Hagel at the Defense Department, are on record favoring better relations. In Cuba, Ral Castro's historic economic reforms are moving the island toward a mixed socialist economy, and incipient political decompression is allowing more space for open debate. These changes, undertaken in response to domestic necessity rather than U.S. demands, are nevertheless moving Cuba in directions long cited by Washington as necessary for better relations. To exert any positive influence on the trajectory of Cuba's evolution, however, Washington has to engage not just with Cuban society but with Cuba's government. Eager to put Cuba on a more solid footing before passing the torch to the next generation of leaders, Ral Castro seems genuinely interested in opening talks with Washington. Unlike his older brother, Ral did not make his political career by mobilizing nationalist sentiment against the United States. He has a strong incentive to settle this conflict so he can focus on renovating the Cuban economy and open it up to U.S. trade and investment. With Cuba in the midst of profound and perilous economic reforms, Venezuela's suddenly uncertain
political future complicates Ral Castro's plans by posing unforeseen and uncontrollable risks. Cuba's success over the past two decades at rebuilding political and economic ties to Europe, Asia and Latin America gives it some breathing space, but the pace of change in Cuba may well depend upon the durability of Chavismo in Venezuela. For

Castro, better relations with the United States means one less problem to complicate the process of pulling the Cuban economy into the 21st century. For Obama, the changes underway in Cuba offer an opportunity to move beyond this one last vestige of the Cold War.

Cuba is willing to normalize relationsit is up to the US

Lee & Sweig 12, http://www.cfr.org/cuba/frozen-us-cuba-relationship/p27510 The Frozen U.S.-Cuba Relationship Interviewee: Julia E.
Sweig, Nelson and David Rockefeller Senior Fellow for Latin America Studies and Director for Latin America Studies, Council on Foreign Relations Interviewer: Brianna Lee, Production Editor, CFR.org February 28, 2012//JH "Brazil is clearly stepping into a space where the United States should be, and the United States has made a decision to watch as that

It's not realistic to expect the United States to undertake a series of unilateral moves toward normalization; it needs a willing partner. I believe we have one in Havana but have failed to read the signals. Raul Castro has now been in office since the beginning of 2008. Raul holds the reins on both foreign policy and domestic policy, and, domestically, the politics of implementing a fairly wide range of economic and political and social reforms are his priority. In a deal that was coordinated with the help of the Cuban Catholic Church and Spain, he released all of the political prisoners in Cuba. He also is taking a number of steps that imply a major rewriting of the social contract in Cuba to shrink the size of the state and give Cuban individuals more freedom--economically, especially, but also in terms of speech--than we've seen in the last fifty
happens." The second point is what's happening in Cuba. years. He has privatized the residential real estate and car market[s], expanded much-needed agrarian reform, lifted caps on salaries, and greatly expanded space for small businesses.

He also is moving to deal with corruption and to prepare the groundwork for a great deal more foreign investment. He's moving in the direction of the kind of reforms that every administration over the last fifty years has called upon Cuba to make, albeit under the rubric of a one-party system. There's a broad range of cooperation--neighborhood security in the Gulf of Mexico, as Cuba has just started drilling for oil, counternarcotics, and natural disasters--between the two countries that is still not happening, and that gives me the impression that the United States has been unwilling to take "yes" for an answer and respond positively to steps taken by Cuba.

XO Solves
Executive orders can dramatically increase relations with Cubathe President has broad authority.
Piccone, 13 http://www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2013/03/18-cuba-piccone Opinion | March 18, 2013 Time to Bet on Cuba By:
Ted Piccone, Senior Fellow and Deputy Director, Foreign Policy//JH The U.S. approach to Cuba has likewise undergone important changes since Obama took office. Since the expansion of travel and remittances in 2009, hundreds of thousands of the 1.8 million Cuban Americans living in the United States have sent more than $2 billion to relatives there, providing important fuel to the burgeoning private sector and empowering citizens to be less dependent on the Cuban state. Much more, however, could be done. In his second term, Obama has

a wealth of policy options available to him through executive authority that would reframe U.S. support for the Cuban people and advance U.S. national interests. In his second term, the president can (and should): Appoint a special envoy to open a discrete dialogue with Havana without preconditions to discuss such issues as migration, travel, counterterrorism and counternarcotics, energy and the environment, and trade and investment. Such talks could result in provisions that strengthen border security, protect Florida from oil spills, break down the walls of communication that prevent our diplomats from traveling outside Havana and help U.S. businesses export more goods, and thereby create jobs. Authorize financial and technical assistance to support burgeoning small businesses and permit trade in goods and services with certified independent entrepreneurs. Expand the list of exports licensed for sale to Cuba, including school and art supplies, water and food preparation systems and telecommunications equipment. Grant general licenses for journalists, researchers, humanitarian organizations and others to facilitate peopleto-people exchanges. Remove Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terrorism, where it does not belong, allowing a greater share of U.S.-sourced components and services in products that enter Cuban commerce. This list is not exhaustive; the president can take any number of unilateral steps to improve relations and increase U.S. support to the Cuban people, as mandated by Congress. He can also expect significant pushback from a well-organized and vocal minority of elected
officials who are increasingly out of step with their constituencies on this issue. (In the 2012 election, Obamas share of the Cuban-American vote increased by 10 points in Miami-Dade county.) He can win the argument, however, by demonstrating that these measures are in the spirit of the congressional mandate to encourage a free and prosperous Cuba. The trend toward reform in Cuba is evident and suggests that an inflection point is approaching. Now is the time to employ a new paradigm by opening a long overdue direct dialogue with our next-door neighbor and thereby test the willingness of the Cuban government to engage constructively, including on the case of U.S. citizen Alan Gross.

By invoking his executive authority to expand trade, travel and communications with the Cuban people, Obama can continue to help them make the transition from subjects to citizens. The moment has come to rise
above historical grievances and extend that outstretched hand he so eloquently promised just four years ago.

XO solves Obama can take executive action towards Cuba to authorize technical assistance, expand trade, and facilitate people-to-people exchanges
Piccone 13 - senior fellow and deputy director for Foreign Policy at the Brookings Institution (Ted Piccone, Time to Bet on Cuba, Brookings, March 18 2013, http://www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2013/03/18-cuba-piccone) MR The U.S. approach to Cuba has likewise undergone important changes since Obama took office. Since the expansion of travel and remittances in 2009, hundreds of thousands of the 1.8 million Cuban Americans living in the United States have sent more than $2 billion to relatives there, providing important fuel to the burgeoning private sector and empowering citizens to be less dependent on the Cuban state. Much more , however, could be done . In his second term, Obama has a wealth of policy options available to him through executive authority that would reframe U.S.

support for the Cuban people and advance U.S. national interests. In his second term, the

president can (and should): Appoint a special envoy to open a discrete dialogue with Havana without preconditions to discuss such issues as migration, travel, counterterrorism and counternarcotics, energy and the environment, and trade and investment. Such talks could result in provisions that strengthen border security, protect Florida from oil spills, break down the walls of
communication that prevent our diplomats from traveling outside Havana and help U.S. businesses export more goods, and thereby create jobs. Authorize

financial and technical assistance to support burgeoning small businesses and permit trade in goods and services with certified independent entrepreneurs. Expand the list of exports licensed for sale to Cuba, including school and art supplies, water and food preparation systems and telecommunications equipment. Grant general licenses for journalists, researchers, humanitarian organizations and others to facilitate people-topeople exchanges. Remove Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terrorism, where it does not belong, allowing a greater share of U.S.-sourced components and services in products that enter Cuban commerce. This list is not exhaustive; the president can take any number of unilateral steps to improve relations and increase U.S. support to the Cuban people, as mandated by Congress. He can also expect significant pushback from a well-organized and
vocal minority of elected officials who are increasingly out of step with their constituencies on this issue. (In the 2012 election, Obamas share of the Cuban-American vote increased by 10 points in Miami-Dade county.) He can win the argument, however, by demonstrating that these measures are in the spirit of the congressional mandate to encourage a free and prosperous Cuba. The

trend toward reform in Cuba is evident and suggests that an inflection point is approaching . Now is the time to employ a new paradigm by opening a long overdue direct dialogue with our next-door neighbor and thereby test the willingness of the Cuban government to engage constructively, including on the case of U.S. citizen Alan Gross. By invoking his executive authority to
expand trade, travel and communications with the Cuban people, Obama can continue to help them make the transition from subjects to citizens. The moment has come promised just four years ago.

to rise above historical grievances and extend that outstretched hand he so eloquently

US-Cuba Relations Low

US-Cuba tensions high, despite Obama
Hanson, 13 http://www.cfr.org/cuba/us-cuba-relations/p11113U.S.-Cuba Relations
Authors: Stephanie Hanson, and Brianna Lee, Senior Production Editor Updated: January 31, 2013//JH

Despite initial optimism over Obama's election, Cuban politicians and citizens are less hopeful of a positive relationship developing between the two countries. Tension between Cuba and the United States flared in December 2009 with Cuba's arrest of Alan Gross, a USAID subcontractor who traveled to the country to deliver communications equipment and arrange Internet access for its Jewish community. Cuban authorities alleged Gross was attempting to destabilize the Cuban regime through a USAID-sponsored "democracy promotion" program, and he was subsequently sentenced to fifteen years in prison. Ral and Fidel Castro have both criticized the Obama administration. In a 2009 speech, Ral Castro accused the United States of "giving new breath to open and undercover subversion against Cuba."

Cuba will stay on the terrorism list in the squo

Hanson, 13 http://www.cfr.org/cuba/us-cuba-relations/p11113U.S.-Cuba Relations
Authors: Stephanie Hanson, and Brianna Lee, Senior Production Editor Updated: January 31, 2013//JH

According to the State Department, Cuba remains on the list because it opposes the global war on terrorism; supports members of two Colombian insurgent groups, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army (ELN); and provides safe haven to several Basque ETA members from Spain. But some experts say there is little evidence to support these allegations. The State Department reaffirmed its position after Cuba protested its addition to the list of countries whose citizens require heightened screening upon entry to the United States. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said, "Cuba is a designated state sponsor of terrorism, and we think it's a well-earned designation given their long-standing support for radical groups in the region."

Repeal Inevitable Now K

Normalization between US and Cuba is inevitablewe just need to accelerate it with the embargo to prevent social and economic collapse
Ashby 13 Senior Research Fellow at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs; served in the U.S. Commerce Departments International Trade
Administration as Director of the Office of Mexico and the Caribbean and as acting Deputy Assistant Secretary of Commerce for the Western Hemisphere; a counsel with the international law firm Dentons; he has PhD, JD and MBA degrees (Dr. Timothy, Preserving Stability in Cuba After Normalizing Relations with the United States The Importance of Trading with State-Owned Enterprises, Council of Hemispheric Affairs, 3/29/13, http://www.coha.org/preserving-stability-in-cuba-timothy-ashby/)//Bwang Cuba under Ral Castro has entered a new period of economic, social, and political transformation. Reforms instituted within the past few years have brought the expansion of private sector entrepreneurial activity, including lifting restrictions on the sales of residential real estate, automobiles, and electronic goods. Additional reforms included, more than a million hectares of idle land has been leased to private farmers, where citizens have been granted permission to stay in hotels previously reserved for tourists, and freedom being granted for most Cubans to travel abroad. Stating that it was time for the gradual transfer of key roles to new generations, President Ral Castro

announced that he will retire by 2018, and named as his possible successor a man who was not even born at the time of the Cuban Revolution. [1] The twilight of the Castro era presents challenges and opportunities for U.S. policy makers. Normalization of relations is inevitable, regardless of timing , yet external and internal factors may accelerate or retard the process. The death of Venezuelan President Hugo Chvez is likely to undermine the already dysfunctional Cuban economy, if it leads to reductions in oil imports and other forms of aid. This could bring social chaos, especially among the islands disaffected youth. Such an outcome would generate adverse consequences for U.S. national and regional security. To maintain Cubas social and economic stability while reforms are maturing, the United States must throw itself open to unrestricted bilateral trade with all Cuban enterprises, both private and state-owned.

AT: Idelogical Bias Alt Cause

Normalizing relations with Cuba solves ideological bias against the United States
Sweig and Bustamante, 13 Nelson and David Rockefeller Senior Fellow for Latin America Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations
and the author of Cuba: What Everyone Needs to Know; a Ph.D. candidate in Latin American history at Yale University (Julia E. Sweig and Michael J. Bustamante, July/August 2013, Foreign Affairs, Cuba After Communism, http://web.ebscohost.com.proxy.lib.umich.edu/ehost/detail?vid=3&sid=2d854e83-f586-49a7-ac8dfdfa99a5a7a2%40sessionmgr110&hid=117&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=ofs&AN=88213870) KD Of course, as the 1990s proved, even a huge financial setback may not be enough to drive Havana to Washington's door.

Half a century of U.S. economic warfare has conditioned Cuban bureaucrats and party cadres to link openness at home or toward the United States with a threat to Cuba's independence. Some hard-liners might prefer muddling through with the status quo to the uncertainty that could come from a wider opening of their country. The best way to change such attitudes, however, would be for Washington to take the initiative in establishing a new diplomatic and economic modus vivendi with Havana. In the short term, the two countries have numerous practical problems to solve together, including environmental and security challenges, as well as the fate of high-profile nationals serving time
in U.S. and Cuban prisons. Most of the policy-steps Obama should take at this stage -- removing Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terrorism, eliminating obstacles for all Americans to travel there, and licensing greater trade and investment -- would not require congressional approval or any grand bargain with Havana. Although

it might be politically awkward in the United States for a president to be seen as helping Castro, on the island, such measures would strengthen the case that Cuba can stand to become a more open, democratic society without succumbing to external pressure or subversion. Deeper commercial ties, moreover, could have repercussions beyond the economic realm, giving internal reformers more
leeway and increasing support on the island for greater economic and political liberalization.

AT Gross Alt Cause

Removing the embargo without conditions is the best way to free Gross.
Herrero, 12 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ricardo-herrero/getting-serious-about-ala_b_2370767.html Ricardo Herrero Deputy
Executive Director, Cuba Study Group GET UPDATES FROM RICARDO HERRERO Getting Serious About Alan Gross Posted: 12/27/2012 12:30 pm//JH

In 2011, the Obama Administration announced a shift in the focus of U.S.-Cuba policy toward empowering civil society and supporting independent economic activity. If Cuba's burgeoning private sector is to grow into a viable alternative to the Island's top-down economic system, it will need a deeper economic relationship with the American private sector. By conditioning all further efforts to engage with the Cuban people on Gross' release, we are playing by the rules of those who benefit from the prolonged confrontation and mutual isolation between the two countries. Denying these private individuals an economic relationship with the United States only serves to further delay the kind of changes that policies like Helms-Burton were ill-designed to accelerate. 3. Look to the Angel
2. Pursue Gross' release and economic engagement concurrently. Carromero case as a model. We don't know what deal the Spanish government struck with the Cubans to secure the release of Angel Carromero, the Popular Party's pro-democracy activist who was charged with the negligent homicide of Oswaldo Pay and Harold Cepero and will now serve his sentence in Spain. What is clear is that through direct diplomacy, the Spanish have been far more successful at liberating political prisoners, democracy advocates, and businessmen from Cuban jails than any other country, all while promoting democracy inside the island through direct support to pro-democracy groups. On the other hand, our confrontational approach has only perpetuated the conflict without any progress to show for it. The United Nations recently condemned Cuba's arbitrary detention of Alan Gross for the first time and the U.S. Embargo on Cuba for the 21st year in a row.

By pivoting negotiations for Gross's release away from a spy-swap and toward win-win alternatives, both the United States and Cuba stand to gain credibility within the international community. The United States could finally pave the road to a future where it can lead an effective multilateral policy toward Cuba focused on the advancement of human rights and helping the Cuban people. Just as importantly, Alan would finally come home.

Unilateral demands are the reason the Gross case causes tensions lifting the embargo is key to resolving it.
Lee & Sweig 12, http://www.cfr.org/cuba/frozen-us-cuba-relationship/p27510 The Frozen U.S.-Cuba Relationship Interviewee: Julia E.
Sweig, Nelson and David Rockefeller Senior Fellow for Latin America Studies and Director for Latin America Studies, Council on Foreign Relations Interviewer: Brianna Lee, Production Editor, CFR.org February 28, 2012//JH

Precisely because we have no overarching framework for diplomacy in place and no political will to establish it for now, the Alan Gross case casts a huge shadow over U.S.-Cuban relations. The heart of the issue is the context in which those [pro-democracy] programs were being implemented. We have a full-blown economic embargo with extra-territorial dimensions that are felt in the banking and finance world--a very comprehensive and well-enforced sanctions program. The democracy programs sound very mom and apple pie-USAID has them around the world, its officials will tell you. But having them in Cuba is anextraordinary provocation. They were inherited from the previous administration's concept of regime change, and under Obama, they remain largely intact. The programs are purposely kept secret from the American public. There is no public information about the private and not-for-profit subcontractors in the United States and around the world, and Cuban institutions and individuals who may be targets of the programs are likewise not told they are part of such U.S. government programs.

The democracy promotion programs have been deliberately politicized in order to provoke, and they have succeeded in provoking. What's key is the context. There's been no real diplomacy; there's no negotiating framework that I've seen for a very long period of time, and again, that has to do with domestic politics. It's very hard to understand otherwise why this guy's still in jail. The United States has repeatedly asked the Cuban government to release Gross unilaterally, with no commitments on our end. Asking for unilateral gestures, having rebuffed or ignored or failed to read the signals from Cuba, has created this impasse.
Having said that, there can be a diplomatic, humanitarian solution, and I see no value to keeping Gross in jail and hope he will be released as soon as possible. But we will need real diplomacy and a framework for negotiating a range of issues both countries care about.

AT: Offcase

Politics

Public
Lifting the embargo is popular recent trends and momentum
Weinmann 4 directs programs on Cuba and the Americas at the World Policy Institute in New York City (Lissa Weinmann, Washington's
Irrational Cuba Policy World Policy Journal, Volume XXI, No. 1, spring 2004, http://www.worldpolicy.newschool.edu/wpi/journal/articles/wpj04-1/weinmann.html) MR

Just as the Cuban-American community and Florida are changing, so is the U.S. Congress. Sentiment among lawmakers has shifted dramatically in favor of easing the embargo on Cuba. The passage of the 2000 Trade Sanctions Reform and Export Enhancement Act, which lifted the ban on food sales to Cuba, was propelled chiefly by farm-state Republicans, one of the leaders being the former senator from Missouri, John Ashcroft. The new law encourages those who doubted the embargo could be eased in an election year. Momentum has continued to build . Fifty-two members of the House and twelve senators have formed bipartisan Cuba working groups, which function as caucuses to help rally action on Cuba.

Even most Cuban-Americans want the embargo too endhard-liners are a minority
Hanson, 13 http://www.cfr.org/cuba/us-cuba-relations/p11113U.S.-Cuba Relations
Authors: Stephanie Hanson, and Brianna Lee, Senior Production Editor Updated: January 31, 2013//JH

Some U.S. constituencies would like to resume relations. U.S. agricultural groups already deal with Cuba, and other economic sectors want access to the Cuban market. Many Cuban-Americans were angered by the Bush administration's strict limits on travel and remittances, though a small but vocal contingent of hard-line Cuban exiles, many of them based in Florida, does not want to normalize relations until the Communist regime is gone. "When they're polled, the majority of Cuban-Americans say that the embargo has failed, and support lifting the travel ban or loosening the embargo or some steps along that continuum of liberalization and normalization," says Julia E. Sweig, CFR director of Latin American studies.

Cuban-Americans increasingly open to normalization

Hanson, 13 http://www.cfr.org/cuba/us-cuba-relations/p11113U.S.-Cuba Relations
Authors: Stephanie Hanson, and Brianna Lee, Senior Production Editor Updated: January 31, 2013//JH

our policy toward Cuba isn't foreign policy; it's domestic. And what we saw in this election was that Obama won almost 50 percent of the Cuban-American vote. He won 36 percent of it in 2008. What does that tell us? It tells us that more and more Cuban-Americans are voting as Americans, not as special interest Cubans focused only on American policy toward the island. Number two, it shows us that Cuban-Americans are not punishing Obama for the openings he did make under his first term in allowing Cubans to commute, invest, and travel pretty much whenever they want to, to the island. And the third thing it
Let's start with Florida, because I noted that means is that in a second term, the president has far more running room than he did even in the first term to go farther, if he wants to, in terms of a broader opening with Havana.

Congress
Anti-Chinese opposition generates GOP support Bolstad 8 (Erika, GOP claim about Chinese oil drilling off Cuba is untrue, 6/11,
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2008/06/11/40776/gop-claim-about-chinese-oildrilling.html#.UZwkw8rSmp4) Why, ask some Republicans, should the United States be thwarted from drilling in its own territory when just 50 miles off the Florida coastline the Chinese government is drilling for oil under Cuban leases? Yet no one can
prove that the Chinese are drilling anywhere off Cuba's shoreline. The China-Cuba connection is "akin to urban legend," said Sen. Mel Martinez, a Republican from Florida who opposes drilling off the coast of his state but who backs exploration in ANWR. "China is not drilling in Cuba's Gulf of Mexico waters, period," said Jorge Pinon, an energy fellow with the Center for Hemispheric Policy at the University of Miami and an expert in oil exploration in the Gulf of Mexico. Martinez cited Pinon's research when he took to the Senate floor Wednesday to set the record straight. Even so, the

Chinese-drilling-in-Cuba legend has gained momentum and has been swept up in Republican arguments to open up more U.S. territory to domestic production. Vice President Dick Cheney, in a speech Wednesday to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, picked up the refrain. Cheney quoted a column by George Will, who wrote last week that "drilling is under way 60 miles off Florida. The drilling is being done by China, in cooperation with Cuba, which is drilling closer to South Florida than U.S. companies are." In his speech, Cheney described the Chinese as being "in cooperation with
the Cuban government. Even the communists have figured out that a good answer to higher prices means more supply." "But Congress says no to drilling in ANWR, no to drilling on the East Coast, no to drilling on the West Coast," Cheney added. The office of House Minority Leader John Boehner defended the GOP drilling claims. "A 2006 New York Times story highlights lease agreements negotiated between Cuba and China and the fact that China was planning to drill in the Florida Strait off the coast of Cuba," said spokesman Michael Steel. The China-Cuba connection also appeared in an editorial Monday in Investor's Business Daily, which wrote that "the U.S. Congress has voted consistently to keep 85 percent of America's offshore oil and gas off-limits, while China and Cuba drill 60 miles from Key West, Fla."

Oil industries support the plantheyre key to the agenda

Sadowski 11 JD at Hofstra university (Richard Sadowski, Fall 2011, Cuban Offshore Drilling: Preparation and Prevention within the
Framework of the United States Embargo Sustainable Development Law & Policy Volume 12 Issue 1 Fall 2011: Natural Resource Conflicts Article 10 http://digitalcommons.wcl.american.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1497&context=sdlp) //KY

For U.S. companies, the embargo creates concern that they will lose out on an opportunity to develop a nearby resource.35 Oil companies have a long history of utilizing political pressure for self-serving purposes.36 American politicians, ever fearful of high energy costs, are especially susceptible to oil-lobby pressures.37 This dynamic was exemplified
in 2008, when then-Vice President Dick Cheney told the board of directors of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that oil is being drilled right now sixty miles off the coast of Florida. But were not doing it, the Chinese are, in cooperation with the Cuban government. Even the communists have figured out that a good answer to high prices is more supply.38 This pressure for U.S. investment in oil is exacerbated by Americas expected increase in consumption rates.39 Oil company stocks are valued in large part on access to reserves.40 Thus, more leases, including those in Cuban waters, equal higher stock valuation.41 The

last thing that American energy companies want is to be trapped on the sidelines by sanctions while European, Canadian and Latin American rivals are free to develop new oil resources on the doorstep of the United States.42

Plan has bipart support votes prove

Wood 10 (Roberta, Senators confident on votes to lift Cuba travel ban,http://www.peoplesworld.org/senators-confident-on-votes-to-liftcuba-travel-ban/)

There are enough votes in the U.S. Senate to lift the travel ban that now bars U.S. citizens from traveling to Cuba, according to a joint statement this month from Republican Mike Enzi, Wyo., and Democrat Byron Dorgan, N.D., who are co-sponsors of the Senate version of the legislation. "It makes no sense to
optimism from the two senators followed the passage in the House Agriculture Committee of HR 4645. The

punish the American people by restricting their right to travel simply because our country is trying to punish the Cuban government, said Dorgan. "Just as has been our policy with China, Vietnam and other communist countries, we should allow Americans to travel freely to Cuba." The expression of

bill deals not only with travel restrictions, but barriers to trade as well. It appears that it is the impact on trade that is creating the

strongest pressure on representatives from agricultural states to remove barriers to trade with Cuba. Before the 50-year-old
embargo, that country was the seventh biggest customer for U.S. exports. For example, Wyoming's entire congressional delegation has signed on in support of the proposed legislation. With a population of only about half a million, Wyoming is a small state, but with two senators and a member of Congress, it wields disproportionate voting power. "This bill is a common-sense step that rights agriculture policies which in the past have made it difficult for farmers and producers to sell their products in Cuba," said Wyoming Rep. Cynthia Lummis, a Republican. "Wyoming's farmers and ranchers cannot afford to lose any opportunities during these challenging economic times," she added. In fact, the U.S.

Chamber of Commerce has made this legislation a high priority, warning congressional reps that it will monitor their votes for its "scoring" of their support for business. Currently food exports to Cuba are not banned, but restrictions under the 2000 Trade Sanctions Reform
Act (TSRA) make trade convoluted and costly. The normal procedure for international trade is for payments to be made directly from the bank of the purchaser to that of the seller. The payment is typically made just before unloading the goods at the purchaser's port. However, TSRA does not allow Cuba-bound food and medical supplies even to leave U.S. ports until payment is received. And receiving that payment is not easy. TSRA requires that the payment from the Cuban bank go to a bank in a third country (which, being a bank, charges a fee of course) before going to the U.S. bank of the supplier. With that extra cost, time and red tape, U.S. goods are less appealing to their potential Cuban customer than those of their competitors in the world market, U.S. business people complain. John J. Wilson, representing Dairy Farmers of America, testified before the House Agricultural Committee in favor of expanding agricultural trade to Cuba. "Cuba is a market where we should be a natural preferred seller due to our strong proximity advantanges," he stated," but regulatory hurdles imposed by our own government have thwarted our ability to best supply this market." Wilson cited a 2009 study that found that doing away with all financing and travel restrictions on U.S. agricultural exports to Cuba would have boosted 2008 dairy sales to that country from $13 million to between $39 and $87 million, increasing U.S. market share from 6 percent to between 18 and 42 percent.

Drilling lobbyists support the plan generates GOP support and shields the links
Kraus 10 (Clifford NYT, Drilling Plans Off Cuba Stir Fears of Impact on Gulf, 9/30,http://naturalresources.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=209452) a Democrat who regularly visits Cuba, said Cubas offshore drilling plans are a potential inroad for loosening the embargo. During a recent humanitarian trip to Cuba, he said, he bumped into a number of American drilling contractors all Republicans who could eventually convince the Congress to make the embargo flexible in this area of oil spills.
New Mexicos governor, Bill Richardson,

XO Doesnt Link
Normal means is executive licensing shields the link no need to publicize activities
Pascual and Huddleston, 9 Carlos, VP and Director of Foreign policy, Brookings Institute, and Vicki, Visiting Fellow
( CUBA: A New policy of Critical and Constructive Engagement, April, http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/reports/2009/4/cuba/0413_cuba.pdf)

Given the strong sentiments and expectations that Cuba engenders, it would be preferable for the Executive Branch to proceed discreetly . The president might first announce the principles he hopes to achieve in Cuba through a policy of en gagement that promotes human rights, the well- being of the Cuban people, and the growth of civil society. To carry out the presidents vision, the Secretary of the Treasury will then have the responsibility to write and publish the changes to the Cuban Assets Control regulations by licensing activities designed to achieve these ends. The Secretary of State can quietly accomplish many diplomatic initiatives on a reciprocal basis without any need to publicize them . This quiet diplomacy might be complemented by a refusal to engage in what some refer to as megaphone diplomacy, in
which our governments trade in - sults across the Straits of Florida, and which only contributes to making the United States appear to be a bully.

President has the authority to license oil drilling and spill preparation activities fall within the scope of U.S. foreign policy
CDA, 11-Center for Democracy in Americas, nonprofit group devoted to changing U.S. policy towards countrees of the Americas (, 9/9/11,
http://democracyinamericas.org/pdfs/Cuba_Drilling_and_US_Policy.pdf) //AK As Robert Muse and Jorge Pion said last year,

the administration has regulatory authority to provide licenses and promulgate new regulations for any conceivable response to an environmental problem in Cuba. While
the Cuban Assets Control Regulations administered by OFAC include a variety of prohibitions that generally bar U.S. private sector participation, involvement or cooperation in connection with the exploration or development of energy sector resources associated with Cuba, or related environmental concerns,

OFAC retains discretionary authority to license such activities by U.S. persons where it is determined by the executive branch to be consistent with U.S. national interests. Such licensing determinations are generally within the scope of the authority of the President of the United States with respect to matters of U.S. foreign policy and national security By moving far beyond the meager licensing activity that has already taken place, the Obama administration could ensure that the international oil companies working with Cuba have full access to U.S. technology and personnel in order to prevent and/or manage a blowout.

CACR authorizes the President to modify individual embargo restrictions

Rerurkar & Sullivan, 11 Neelesh, Specialist in Energy Policy, and Mark, Specialist in Latin American Affairs (Congressional Research
Service, November 28, http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/R41522.pdf)//SEP Since the United States imposed comprehensive economic sanctions on Cuba in the early 1960s, most financial transactions with Cuba have been prohibited, including U.S. investment in Cubas offshore energy sector. The Cuban Assets Control Regulations (CACR, found at 31 CFR 515), first issued by the Treasury Department in 1963, lay out a comprehensive set of economic sanctions against Cuba, including a prohibition on most financial transactions. The CACR have been amended many times over the years to reflect changes in policy and remain in force today. The Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act of 1996 (P.L. 104-114), enacted in the aftermath of Cubas shooting down of two U.S. civilian planes in February 1996, codified the Cuban embargo, including all the restrictions under the CACR. The codification is especially significant because of its long-lasting effect on U.S. policy toward Cuba. The executive branch is prohibited from lifting the economic embargo until certain democratic conditions are met. The

CACR still provides the executive branch with the ability to modify the embargo restrictions, but the President cannot suspend or completely terminate the Cuban embargo regulations without first determining that a transition government or democratically-elected government is in power in Cuba.75 Some U.S. business and policy groups have called on Congress and the Administration to allow
U.S. oil companies to become involved in Cubas offshore oil development. Several legislative initiatives were introduced in the 111th Congress (S. 774, H.R. 1918, and S. 1517) that would have specifically authorized such activities and amended U.S. law to allow for travel for such

activities (see Legislative Initiatives below). A major business argument in favor of U.S. involvement in Cubas offshore energy sector is that U.S. failure to enter into the Cuban market completely hands over potential investment opportunities to foreign competitors.76 As mentioned above, national oil companies from Russia, China, Venezuela, and elsewhere have been investing in Cubas energy industry. In a 2009 report, the Brookings Institution offered several additional reasons for U.S. involvement in Cubas offshore development. The report maintains: that it would help reduce Cubas dependence on Venezuela for its oil imports; that it would increase U.S. influence in Cuba if U.S. companies had a significant presence in the county; that U.S. companies have the expertise to develop Cubas offshore oil and gas in a safe and responsible manner; and that it is preferable to have U.S. companies involved because they have higher standards of transparency than some foreign oil companies.77

Treasury department can modify the embargo to allow for new investment shields the link Cave, 12 (Damien NYT, Easing of Restraints in Cuba Renews Debate on U.S. Embargo, 11/19,
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/20/world/americas/changes-in-cuba-create-support-for-easing-embargo.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0) In Washington, Mr. Gross is seen as the main impediment to an easing of the embargo, but there are also limits to

what the

president could do without Congressional action.

transitional or democratically elected government. Obama

The 1992 Cuban Democracy Act conditioned the waiving of sanctions on

the introduction of democratic changes inside Cuba. The 1996 Helms-Burton Act also requires that the embargo remain until Cuba has a

administration officials say they have not given up, and could move if the president decides to act on his own. Officials say that under the Treasury Departments licensing and regulation-writing authority , there is room for significant modification . Following the legal logic of Mr. Obamas changes in 2009, further expansions in travel are possible along with new allowances for investment or imports and exports, especially if narrowly applied to Cuban businesses.

Shunning
Shunning in Cuba hasnt worked for the past 50 yearsengagement solves human rights Castor 13 U.S. Representative for Florida's 14th congressional district, serving in Congress (Kathy, WHAT I LEARNED IN CUBA, Tampa
Bay, 5/19/13, Lexis)//Bwang Make no mistake, the

Cuban government must improve human rights. But it is clear that the policy of the embargo and isolation over 50 years hasn't improved the human rights situation. I have met with dissidents and human rights activists. Pedro Pablo Alvarez was jailed and eventually fled to the United States. Yoani Sanchez blogs about the challenges of everyday life in Cuba. What struck me was at the end of almost all of these conversations, they told me they believe that greater engagement, not isolation, is the way to help Cubans. Engagement must be handled with a long-term vision and can only be hammered out through direct negotiation between the two countries. I am more convinced than ever that America should give greater attention to its island neighbor, lift the embargo and promote greater modernization of civil society in Cuba to benefit the Cuban people. Families and businesses in America also hope for a new day. There is a generational change occurring in the leadership of Cuba just as has happened in other countries around the world. America can lay the groundwork for improvement in human rights, democracy and economic change that is long overdue - if leaders in government recognize this important window of opportunity. Shunning empirically failsthe regime is as strong as ever and it just hurts us Bloomberg 13 (The U.S. Is Helping to Keep Castros Regime Alive, Bloomberg View, 3/3/13, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/201303-03/cuba-sanctions-help-keep-castros-regime-alive.html)//Bwang

Cuba is hardly benign. It beats and imprisons dissidents, commits aggressive espionage, cheers on Iran and Syria, and supports some of the Western Hemispheres most democratically challenged regimes. Still, it is
fitfully changing for the better, and the U.S. can help speed along the process. President Raul Castro, the 81-year-old brother of Fidel, has laid out plans for economic reform and is passing power to Cubas post-revolutionary generation. The impending demise of Hugo Chavez, whose country supplies Cuba with about two-thirds of its oil in a sugar-daddy barter arrangement, is another potential catalyst for change. That said, theres an even better reason to alter U.S.

policy toward Cuba: It isnt working. A half-century after John F. Kennedy slapped sanctions on the Castros, theyre still in power. The U.S. embargo has little global support; no other country puts sanctions on Cuba. Even more absurdly, sanctions that were first imposed to protest Castros expropriation of U.S. assets now keep most U.S. companies out of a Cuban market that is attracting increasing amounts of foreign investment.
Although reliable numbers are elusive, one recent report estimated that total foreign investment rose to $3.5 billion in 2009 from $1.9 billion in 2001.

Gitmo CP
There are too many legal hurdles to the counterplan McLaughlin 13 (Seth, reporter for the Politics Desk of the Washington Post, No getting out of Gitmo: U.S. cant release detainees to state
sponsors of terrorism, 5/27/13, http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/may/27/us-laws-keep-detainees-locked-up-atguantanamo/?page=all, MDM) For a president eager to close the site entirely, Noor Uthman Mohammad should be one of the easier Guantanamo Bay detainee cases to clear. Captured in Pakistan in 2002 and accused of helping run an al Qaeda training camp, Noor, as he is referred to in court documents,

pleaded guilty in 2011 to charges that he supported terrorism. He is scheduled to complete his 34-month sentence next winter. But Noor is Sudanese, and the federal government officially lists Sudan as a state sponsor of terrorism. Under the latest defense policy law, President Obama and other U.S. authorities cannot repatriate any of the detainees to a country on that list. Unless the law is changed, he will remain there at the expiration of his sentence, said Andrea Prasow, senior counterterrorism counsel at Human Rights Watch. Noors case is part of the complex political and legal puzzle that Mr. Obama must solve as he looks to provide some sort of closure for the 166 detainees at U.S. Naval Base Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where many are taking part in a hunger strike to protest their
detentions. Speaking at the National Defense University last week, Mr. Obama said the prison has become a symbol around the world for an America that flouts the rule of law. The president renewed his pledge memorialized in an executive order he signed just days after taking office in 2009 to close the prison. Given my administrations relentless pursuit of al Qaedas leadership, there is no justification beyond politics for Congress to prevent us from closing a facility that should have never been opened, the president said. He said he will name a senior envoy to expedite transfers of detainees to other sites and countries and will lift his own moratorium on sending detainees back to Yemen. Some of the 166 inmates at Guantanamo are deemed too dangerous to release, but 86 have been approved for transfer. Of those, 56 are from Yemen. Legal hurdles Under

the defense policy law, Mr. Obama cannot transfer any of the detainees to the U.S. and can transfer them to other countries only if his administration certifies that they are not likely to return to the battlefield. Republicans who have helped block all efforts to shutter Guantanamo said they dont see how Mr. Obama can certify Yemen as stable enough to take the detainees. Lack of transfer location makes leaving Guantanamo open the best option Daskal 13 (Jennifer, fellow and adjunct professor at Georgetown Law Center, former counsel to the assistant attorney general for national
security at the Department of Justice and former member of the senior counterterrorism counsel at Human Rights Watch, Dont Close Guantnamo, 1/10/13, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/11/opinion/dont-close-guantanamo.html, MDM) At the time, I reacted defensively. I was indignant. I insisted on the legitimacy of my convictions. But even then the writing was on the wall. For

a core group of detainees, closing Guantnamo would not mean release or prosecution, as most human rights and civil liberties groups have long advocated. Rather, it would mean relocation to the United States, or elsewhere, for continued detention. Now, almost four years later, I have changed my mind. Despite recognizing the many policy imperatives in favor
of closure, despite the bipartisan support for this position, and despite the fact that 166 men still languish there, I now believe that

Guantnamo should stay open at least for the short term. While I have been slow to come to this realization, the signs have been evident for some time. Three years ago, Barack Obamas administration conducted a comprehensive review of the Guantnamo detainees and concluded that about four dozen prisoners couldnt be prosecuted, but were too dangerous to be transferred or released. They are still being held under rules of war that allow detention
without charge for the duration of hostilities. Others happened to hail from Yemen. Although many of them were cleared for transfer, the

transfers were put on indefinite hold because of instability in Yemen, the fear that some might join Al Qaeda forces, and Yemens inability to put adequate security measures in place. While the specific numbers have most likely shifted over
time, the basic categories persist. These are men whom the current administration will not transfer, release or prosecute, so long as the legal authority to detain, pursuant to the law of war, endures. President Obama raised the hopes of the human rights community when during his re-election campaign he once again said the detention center should be closed. But it was not clear whether he had a viable plan, and any such plan would almost certainly involve moving many of the detainees into continued detention in the United States, where their living conditions would almost certainly deteriorate. Guantnamo in 2013 is a far cry from Guantnamo in 2002. Thanks to the spotlight placed on the facility by human rights groups, international observers and detainees lawyers, there has been a significant, if not uniform, improvement in conditions. The majority of Guantnamo detainees now live in communal facilities where they can eat, pray and exercise together. If moved to

the United States, these same men would most likely be held in military detention in conditions akin to supermax prisons confined to their cells 22 hours a day and prohibited from engaging in group activities, including communal prayer. The hard-won improvements

in conditions would be ratcheted back half a decade to their previous level of harshness. And Guantnamo would no longer be that failed experiment on an island many miles away. The Obama administration would be
affirmatively creating a new system of detention without charge for terrorism suspects on American soil, setting a precedent and creating a facility readily available to future presidents wanting to rid themselves of a range of potentially dangerous actors. The political reality is that closure of Guantnamo is unlikely to happen anytime soon, and if it did, it would do more harm than good. We should

instead focus on finding places to transfer those cleared to leave the facility and, more important, on defining the end to the war. In a recent speech, Jeh Johnson, then the Department of Defense general counsel, discussed a future tipping point at which
Al Qaeda would be so decimated that the armed conflict would be deemed over. Statements from high level officials suggest that this point may be near. And as the United States pulls out of Afghanistan, there is an increasingly strong argument that the war against Al Qaeda is coming to a close. With the end of the conflict, the legal justification for the detentions will finally disappear. At that point, the remaining men in Guantnamo can no longer be held without charge, at least not without running afoul of basic constitutional and international law prohibitions. Only then is there a realistic hope for meaningful closure, not by recreating a prison in the United States but through the arduous process of transferring, releasing or prosecuting the detainees left there. In

the meantime, we should keep Guantnamo

open. Leaving Guantanamo open maintains US security Rogan 12 (Tom, BA in War Studies from Kings College London and an MSc in Middle East Politics and blogger for the Daily Caller, Why
Guantanamo Bay should remain open, 9/24/12, http://dailycaller.com/2012/09/24/why-guantanamo-bay-should-remain-open/, MDM) The recent death (a suspected suicide) of a prisoner at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay has helped reignite the debate over whether the facility should be closed. Its a complex issue. However, I think Guantanamo

should remain open. As I see it, there are two major considerations that should drive the debate about Guantanamos future. The first is whether keeping the facility open is the best way for the U.S. government to protect the American people. I think it is. It offers several compelling advantages over the alternatives. For one, the detainees are guarded by welltrained MPs, isolated from support and held in a place from which escape would be nearly impossible. Remember, many Guantanamo detainees are resourceful, ideologically committed enemies of the United States who have stated that they want to maim and kill Americans, so its important that theyre kept in a facility thats as secure as possible. Closing the Guantanamo facility and opening a new detention facility in the U.S. would pose profound security risks. The new facility would become a beacon for extremists and an expensive, highly complex challenge to secure. Just look at
what happened when the Obama administration attempted to try Khalid Sheik Mohammed in New York City (an effort which it has since abandoned). And while many politicians love the idea of a domestic detention facility, few want one in their backyard. Moreover, over the years the government has invested an enormous amount of money in expanding the Guantanamo facilitys support base. Inmates now have access to a well-stocked library, gym and soccer field. These outlets

dont simply provide humane incarceration conditions and encourage rehabilitation; they also directly serve our national security interests. If the detainees were transferred out of Guantanamo, the benefit of these outlets would be lost. The second consideration that should drive the Guantanamo debate is whether keeping the facility open is the best way to ensure justice for the detainees
as well as the victims of terrorism. At the core here is a critical legal question: Are the Guantanamo detainees suspected illegal combatants subject to military authority, or are they suspected criminals and thus subject to the civilian criminal court system? I support the prior understanding. The Guantanamo

detainees were captured while engaged in armed hostilities against the United States. Their objectives in fighting the United States were manifestly political and their chosen mechanisms of action were
undoubtedly military. Indeed, as criminal-approach advocates often neglect to mention, a substantial number of former Guantanamo detainees have returned to the battlefield. Put simply, operating as part of organized groups like al Qaida, these detainees were at war. From my perspective, if

the Guantanamo detainees are criminal suspects, laws of war cannot exist in a compatible

reality. Next, lets consider Guantanamos procedural justice. In the past, many Guantanamo detainees havent been given speedy trials. However, with President Obama having finally re-authorized the military commission process, more progress toward bringing detainees to trial will be made. That progress will illustrate Americas commitment to the rule of law and undercut negative perceptions about Guantanamo. Contrary to popular opinion, anger toward Guantanamo amongst Islamic
populations is not driven by an inherent discomfort with military commissions, but rather by the perception that Guantanamo is a black hole of permanent, un-reviewed detention. Ultimately, the

detention facility at Guantanamo Bay provides an imperfect solution to a highly complex problem. While 82% of all Guantanamo detainees have already been released, wherever possible the
U.S. government should expedite this process, repatriating those who are no longer believed to pose a substantial threat. At the same time, the

accused should face military commissions. In the end, though, considering the many interests at stake and absence of good alternatives, I believe that the

Guantanamo detention facility must remain open for the foreseeable future.

Guantanamo closure inevitable, Obama is making it a top priority Westwood 13 (Sarah, political columnist for ViralRead, President Obama Renews Push to Close Guantanamo Bay Prison, 5/1/13,
http://www.viralread.com/2013/05/01/president-obama-renews-push-to-close-guantanamo-bay-prison/, MDM) During a press conference marking the first 100 days of his second term, President Barack Obama

announced that his administration would once again begin working with Congress to close the military prison located in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The detention center, often referred to as Gitmo in the media, has been housing foreign terrorism suspects for
12 years and has been at the center of a constitutional and human rights storm ever since the George W. Bush administration opened its doors in early 2002. Guantanamo is not necessary to keep America safe, President Obama stated Tuesday. It hurts us, in terms of our international standing. It lessens cooperation with our allies on counter-terrorism efforts. It is a recruitment tool for extremists. It needs to be closed. In 2008, then-senator Obamas election campaign included a promise to shut Gitmo down during his first year in office. After several half-hearted attempts to make that happen in the early days of his presidency, including the repatriation and resettlement of many of the detainees, the president all but forgot the infamous prison. In fact, the administration recently shuttered its office in charge of closing the facility, and reassigned the top diplomat charged with its task. But the notoriously unpopular prison has been harder to ignore in recent days as well over half of the detainees inside its walls engage in a hunger strike to protest their prolonged detention. Over the weekend, the Navy sent 40 extra medics to the facility to strengthen its ability to care for the strikers 21 of whom are now being force-fed through nasal tubes in what the American Medical Association has called a violation of core ethical values. The Obama administration has attempted to shift blame onto Congress for its inability to close Gitmos doors. Congress blocked the acquisition of a state prison in Illinois to which prisoners could be transferred and barred the White House from financing the trials of any Guantanamo captives on US soil. President Obamas Yemeni ban forbids the transfer of prisoners to the Arabian peninsula state problematic, because about 90% of the detainees call Yemen home.

President Obama must inevitably brush against Congress if he truly wants to close Guantanamo Bay this time around. Proponents of an empty Gitmo claim that the president can only get the job done if he wrests control of its closure policy from the Pentagon and works with Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel to begin certifying cleared detainees for transfer, a group that makes up more than half of the prisons population. Obama will follow through on his campaign promise, close Guantanamo Noble 13 (Graham, political writer for the Guardian Express, Guantanamo Bay Prison to Close as President Obama Speech Reshapes War
on Terror, 5/26/13, http://guardianlv.com/2013/05/gitmo-to-close-as-president-obama-reshapes-war-on-terror/, MDM) On Thursday, we witnessed the official birth of what will become President Obamas foreign policy legacy. His announcement of a kinder, gentler but more precise approach to Americas biggest overseas challenge revealed many things; it also left many questions. As part of a shift in focus, it appears that GITMO,

the Guantanamo Bay prison facility, is to close as President Obamas speech reshapes the war on terror. Guantanamo Bay, which houses enemy combatants most of whom have been captured on the battlefield has long been criticized by the President as creating a focal point for mistrust, hatred and outrage in the Muslim
world, despite the fact that the largest terrorist attack on American soil was carried out prior to Guantanamo Bay assuming its current role.

Obama pledged to close the detention facility when campaigning for the White House. To date, he has failed to do so, in part because of determined political resistance. During Thursdays speech, he once again pushed for the prison to close and the detainees to be transferred to other countries or tried on U.S. soil. Today, I once again call on Congress to lift the restrictions on detainee transfers from GTMO. I have asked the Department of Defense to designate a site in the United States where we can hold military commissions, The President said. To the greatest extent possible, we will transfer detainees who have been cleared to go to other countries. Where appropriate, we will
bring terrorists to justice in our courts and military justice system. And we will insist that judicial review be available for every detainee. President Obama acknowledged, during his speech, that certain detainees presented problems that his proposals did not address. He referred to those who have plotted against or attacked U.S. troops or facilities but whose cases are hampered by a lack of evidence or evidence that, he said, was inadmissible in a court of law. The president provided no clear, immediate solution to these problems, saying once we

commit to a process of closing GTMO, I am confident that this legacy problem can be resolved, consistent
with our commitment to the rule of law. A major concern for many Washington politicians, and more importantly for the American people, is the enormous security implication of having foreign terrorists housed in facilities in the United States; it is not so much the possibility of such inmates escaping, which would be unlikely in the extreme, as the prospect of such a site or sites becoming potential targets themselves. Housing these detainees on the U.S. mainland will inevitably lead to enormous additional security expenditure and the prospect of tightened restrictions on movement in and around the area of such sites. This raises the long-standing issue of balancing freedom with security. Locations involved with both the detention of terrorists and the legal proceedings involving them will be under heavy surveillance and subject to enormous increases in police, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and even military presence. In laying out his intentions, regarding

Guantanamo, the President has set the stage addition to a heated debate in the country as a whole.

for a new confrontation with congressional Republicans, in

Guantanamo has no indefinite detentions Hitchon 13 (Joe, Policy expert for the Inter Press Service, US Claims No Indefinite Detention at Guantnamo, 3/14/13,
https://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/03/14-0, MDM) In unusual public testimony, the

U.S. government has publicly stated that no indefinite detention is taking place among detainees at the military prison in Guantnamo Bay. The United States only detains individuals when that detention is lawful and does not intend to hold any individual longer than is necessary, Michael Williams, a senior legal advisor for the State Department, told a hearing at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. The testimony took place Tuesday as a panel of human rights lawyers appealed before an international human rights body over what they called an unfolding humanitarian crisis at the military prison, calling for an end to ongoing human rights violations they say are being committed against the detainees. The
hearing, at the Organisation of American States headquarters here in Washington, marked the first time since President Barack Obamas reelection that the U.S. government has had to publicly answer questions concerning Guantnamo Bay. Legal representatives for the detainees also presented disturbing eyewitness accounts of prisoner despair at the facility, brought on by prolonged indefinite detention and harsh conditions that has led to a sustained hunger strike involving more than 100 prisoners at the U.S. base in Cuba. Established in 2002, the Guantnamo Bay military prison held, at its height, more than 700 suspects of terrorism. The facility currently holds 166 prisoners, of whom 90 most of them Yemenis have reportedly been cleared for repatriation, while another 36 are due to be prosecuted in federal courts, although those trials have yet to take place. The remaining are being held indefinitely without trial because evidence of their past ties to terrorist groups is unlikely to be admissible in court. In some cases, this is reportedly due to its acquisition by torture, while in other cases because the U.S. government believes that the suspects would return to extremist activities if they were to be released. The IACHR has repeatedly called for the closure of the Guantnamo Bay detention centre, and has requested permission to meet with the men detained there. The U.S. government has failed to allow the hemispheric rights body permission to make such a visit, however. The IACHR held Tuesdays hearing to learn more about the unfolding humanitarian crisis at the Guantnamo prison. It also focused on new components to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), signed earlier this year, which has been criticised for authorising indefinite detention and restricts the transfer of Guantnamo detainees. Tuesdays hearing saw testimony from experts in law, health and international policy, covering the psychological impact of indefinite detention, deaths of some suspects at Guantnamo, the lack of access to fair trials, and U.S. policies that have restricted the prisons closure. On taking office four years ago, President Obama famously promised to close the prison and ordered an end to certain interrogation tactics that rights groups called torture, including extraordinary rendition to third countries known to use torture. Yet he has since relied

to a much greater extent on drone strikes against high value suspected terrorists from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, while failing to close the prison. In the 2008 campaign, both *presidential candidate
John] McCain and Obama were squarely opposed to Guantnamo and agreed that this ugly hangover from the Bush/Cheney era had to be abandoned, Omar Farah, staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), told IPS. But four years later, the

political whims have completely reversed and there is almost unanimity that Guantnamo needs to remain open aside
from occasional platitudes from the president. Yet Farah is clear in his view that reversing this trend is still well within President Obamas power. This is something that really calls for leadership from the president he needs to decide if he wants Guantnamo to be part of his legacy, Farah says. If the U.S. isnt willing to charge someone in a fair process and cant produce proper evidence of their crimes, then those prisoners have to be released. There is just no other way to have a democratic system. Weve never had this kind of an alternative system of justice, and yet thats what we have in Guantnamo. Pervasive health crisis Human rights activists claim the Obama administration has not only broken his promise to rapidly close Guantnamo, but that his administration has also extended some of the worst aspects of the system. They point to the administrations continuance of indefinite detention without charge or trial, employing illegitimate military commissions to try some suspects, and blocking accountability for torture. At Tuesdays hearings, the State Departments Williams

made extensive note of the health facilities and services that the U.S. government has made available for the detainees. And while critics do admit that the government facilities do meet international standards for detainees physical needs, they note that the mere fact of indefinite detention inflicts a toll all its own.

Links to PTX
Closing Guantanamo links to politics McLaughlin 13 (Seth, reporter for the Politics Desk of the Washington Post, No getting out of Gitmo: U.S. cant release detainees to state
sponsors of terrorism, 5/27/13, http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/may/27/us-laws-keep-detainees-locked-up-atguantanamo/?page=all, MDM) Well, guess what, between December 2009 and today, has Yemen shown any indication that theyre more capable of looking after those individuals? Absolutely not, said Sen. Saxby

Chambliss of Georgia, the ranking Republican on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. If we were to transfer those individuals to Yemen, wed be just like turning them loose. The opposition in Congress creates a political problem for Mr. Obama as well as a security issue, Ms. Prasow said. The biggest hurdle Obama faces is whether he has the political will to follow through with his promises, she said. If hes truly going to move forward, he should continue to make clear to Congress and the
public that closing Guantanamo is in the U.S. national security interest. I think if Obama takes concrete steps such as transferring detainees to their home countries and starting up the administrative review process he designed members of Congress will support his efforts. But first they, and

the general public, need to see that he is serious. As of now, the public is not supportive. A

Fox News poll last week found that 63 percent of Americans wanted the prison to be kept open and 28 percent said it should be closed. John Hutson, retired Navy rear admiral, lawyer and judge advocate of the Navy, said the American public is woefully misinformed about the prisoners, the options for moving them and the damage Guantanamo has done to the nations image on the global stage. If people had a better understanding of those factors, they would be clamoring for it to be closed rather than trying to keep it open, Adm. Hutson said. And, of course, *the

presidents+ critics in Congress will stop at nothing to thwart whatever he is trying to do. I just hope he doesnt come out in favor of Fathers Day. It may not help Mr. Obamas cause domestically, but the top
U.N. human rights official criticizes the U.S. government for keeping Guantanamo open, saying the prison and the U.S. armed drone program that Mr. Obama also wrestled with last week are counterproductive in the battle against terrorist groups. The injustice embodied in this detention center has become an ideal recruitment tool for terrorists, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay sa id Monday at the opening of a session of the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva. Hardening opposition Despite Mr. Obamas

renewed plea,

opposition in Congress appears to be stiffening.

Closing Guantanamo is deeply unpopular Catalini 13 (Michael, staff writer covering politics for the National Journal and former deputy editor of Influence Alley covering Congress
and K Street, Political Barriers Stand between Obama and Closing Guantanamo Facility, 5/30/13, http://www.nationaljournal.com/politics/political-barriers-stand-between-obama-and-closing-guantanamo-facility-20130503, MDM)

The last time President Obama tried to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center, Congress stopped him abruptly. The Senate did what it rarely does: It voted in bipartisan fashion, blocking his attempt at funding the closure. Four years later, and the political barriers that blocked the president from closing the camp that now houses 166 detainees are as immovable as ever. Moving the prisoners to facilities in the U.S., a solution the administration suggested, proved to be a political minefield in 2009. Most Americans oppose closing the base, according to a polls, and congressional leaders have balked at taking action. The Cuban camp is grabbing headlines again because of a hunger
strike among the detainees. Nearly 100 have stopped eating, and the military is forcing them to eat by placing tubes through their noses, the Associated Press reported. The president reconfirmed his opposition to the camp, responding to a question about the recent hunger strikes at Guantanamo Bay with regret in his voice. Well, it is not a surprise to me that we've got problems in Guantanamo, which is why, when I was campaigning in 2007 and 2008 and when I was elected in 2008, I said we need to close Guantanamo. I continue to believe that we've got to close Guantanamo, he said. Obama

blamed his failure to follow through on a campaign promise on lawmakers. Now, Congress determined that they would not let us close it, he said. Despite Obamas desire to close the base and his pledge this week to go back to this, he touched on a political reality: Lawmakers are not inclined to touch the issue. "The president stated that the reason Guantanamo has not closed was because of Congress. That's true," Majority Leader Harry Reid told reporters last month, declining to elaborate. The stakes for Obama on this issue are high when it comes to his liberal base, who would like to see him display the courage of his convictions and close the camp. But the political will is lacking, outside a small contingent of lawmakers, including Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois and five other liberal Democrats who sided with Obama in 2009, and left-leaning opinion writers. Congressional Democrats, unlike Obama, will have to

face voters again. And closing the camp is deeply unpopular. A Washington Post/ABC News poll in February 2012 showed that 70 percent of Americans wanted to keep the camp open to detain terrorist suspects , and in a 2009 Gallup Poll, a majority said they would be upset if it shut down. In 2009, the Senate voted 90-6 to block the presidents efforts at closing the camp. Obama had signed an order seeking to close the detention center, but the Senates vote denied the administration the $80 million needed to fund the closure. Closing the camp in Cuba and bringing the detainees into the United States grates against the political sensibilities of many lawmakers. Jim Manley, a Democratic strategist who served as Reids spokesman at the time, remembers the debate very well. I'm still not sure that there's much of an appetite among Democrats on the Hill to try and deal with this issue once and for all, Manley said in an
interview.