Failed Sanctions: Why the U.S. Embargo against Cuba Could Never Work

Notes

Notes Chapter 1.Transnationalism in the Context of Economic Sanctions 1. The differentiation between transnationalism “from above” and “from below” has been criticized because it fails to recognize that certain agents may act simultaneously from above and from below depending on the nature of their actions (Schein 1998), downplays the role of states in co-opting and advancing transnational practices (Itzigsohn 2000), and privileges organized activities over more diffuse forms of mass action with no collective purpose (Mahler 1998, 72). In order to describe the variations in the intensities, frequencies, and the scope of cross-border linkages, international relations scholars have introduced several different typologies of transnationalism as referred to continuous or occasional practices (Itzigsohn et al. 1999), the level of state and economy or the intimate level of family and household (Gardner 2002), and global networks or kinship and diasporic ties (Faist 2000). 2. The political power and the low degree of accountability of U.S. corporations are mostly due to their economic power. In 2000, a total of fifty-nine of the global top two hundred TNCs were U.S.-based enterprises, including AT&T, Boeing, Lockheed-Martin, BellSouth, Kmart, Chase Manhattan, GTE, Mobil, and Texaco (Anderson and Cavanagh 2000). 3. The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD 2004, 5) reported that between 1990 and 2002 the FDI performances of sanctioned countries like Sudan and Myanmar were among the best in the least developed world. 4. In his historical overview of immigration in the United States, Tilly (1990, 84) emphasized that, to a large degree, the actual units of migration are not individuals but groups of people connected by acquaintance, kinship, and work experience. 5. Official development assistance (ODA) consists of loans or grants administered with the objective of promoting sustainable social and economic development and the welfare of the recipient country. Official development assistance resources must be contracted with governments of foreign nations with whom the recipient has diplomatic, trade relations, or bilateral agreements or which are members of the United Nations, their agencies, or multilateral lending institutions. 6. While migrants’ remittances to their countries of origin certainly benefit recipient families (Siddiqui and Kemal 2002; Adams and Page 2003; Maphosa 2007; Acosta et al. 2008), the issue of whether these financial flows contribute to economic development has elicited both positive (Stahl and Habib 1989; Adams 1991, 1998; Nishat and Bilgrami 1991; Glytsos 1993; Brown 1994; Alderman 1996; Durand et al. 1996; Ratha 2003; Carling 2004; León-Ledesma and Piracha 2004; Orozco 2007) and negative (Wiest 1984; Rubenstein 1992; Nyberg-Sorensen et al. 2002; Gubert 2002; Ballard 2003; Chami et al. 2003) responses. 7. When the U.S. Congress passed the Helms-Burton law and threatened sanctions against foreign firms investing in Cuba, the European Union vowed to fight the legislation at the World Trade Organization. Mexico and Canada passed antidote laws preventing their citizens from complying with U.S. regulations. 8. In 1980, after thousands of Cubans rushed into the Peruvian embassy in Havana in search of asylum, the Castro government opened the port of Mariel to permit anyone who wanted to leave the island to do so in an orderly fashion. While the exodus proceeded rather chaotically, approximately 125,000 Cubans left, most of them reaching the United States. 9. Brundenius (2002, 378) estimated that the Gini coefficient in Cuba grew from 0.22 in 1986 to 0.41 in 1999 as a result of unequal access to hard currency sources, with remittances representing one of the factors that contributed to increased inequality. Chapter 2. Relations between Cuba and the United States, 1959–2009 1. For a review of U.S.-Cuba relations from the early nineteenth century until the revolution of 1959, see Pérez 2003. 2. The Monroe Doctrine, issued by President James Monroe of the United States in December 1823, proclaimed U.S. opposition to further European expansion in the Western Hemisphere and rejected any transfer of colonial possessions among European powers while pledging Washington’s respect for existing possessions and borders in the region. 3. In late October 1962, the Khrushchev-Castro attempt to deploy nuclear missiles on Cuban soil brought the world to the brink of a nuclear war. The crisis ended with the Soviet Union agreeing to remove its missiles from Cuba in exchange for the U.S. commitment not to invade Cuba and to withdraw U.S. missiles from Turkey (Nathan 2001, 95). The removal of American missiles in southern Italy was also completed in 1963 even though...