Now the good news; the General Assembly resolution is non-binding. Still for the sixteenth year, the world body has sought to send a message, some would say a slap, to U.S. policy which has enforced an economic embargo on Cuba since 1960. Recently President George W. Bush again tightened economic and financial sanctions on Cuba in an attempt to force overdue political change on the communist island.

From the UN side, the rhetoric was predictable with Pakistan and the Group of 77 saying “the embargo had caused a high degree of economic and financial damage that had impacted the well-being of the Cuban people.” Venezuela’s Deputy Foreign Minister addressed the conclave and proclaimed hysterically that the “embargo against Cuba was genocidal and unilateral . . . an anachronism of failed imperial policies.” Vietnam called for “non-interference in each other’s domestic affairs.” Communist China’s delegate offered an ironic twist saying the sanctions “went against the principles of democracy, freedom, rule of law and human rights.”

Cuba’s Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque slammed the blockade which has lasted nearly fifty years and cost Cuba an estimated $89 billion in losses. The Minister recited the classic Castro line that the embargo is killing kids and ruining an otherwise sunny future for the Cuban people. Sadly socialism ruined Cuba’s prospects long ago.

The European Union believes that the United States trade policy toward Cuba is “fundamentally a bilateral issue.” Still “the EU deplores that the human rights situation has not fundamentally changed despite a decrease in the number of political prisoners.” An EU statement stressed, “The Cuban government continues to deny its citizens internationally recognized civil, political and economic rights and freedoms.” The EU adds however, “we repeat our view that the lifting of the U.S. trade embargo would open Cuba’s economy to the benefit of the Cuban people.”

Beyond the droning rhetoric about Uncle Sam being the bad guy, the fact remains that most of the world — especially Canada and the Europeans — are trading with and traveling to Cuba despite the embargo. Since Castro’s Cuba lost its longtime economic lifeline from the former Soviet Union, it now has ample economic support and solidarity from Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela. The blockade while having the effects to complicate business and commerce with Cuba, has unfortunately failed to bring down the regime.

Not surprisingly the continuing embargo has created an anti-American backlash throughout Latin America and is indirectly reflected even in Western democracies by the idiots who parade around in Che Guevara t-shirts

Recall the embargo started with President Dwight Eisenhower. It carried on through John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson followed by Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan (two terms), George Bush Sr., Bill Clinton (two terms), George W. Bush (two terms). The dictator Fidel Castro and his brother Raul have outlasted ten American Presidents!

Do Castro’s cronies profit from the embargo as did Saddam Hussein from the infamous Iraqi Oil for Food Program? When shortages are created and enforced, it encourages lucrative black markets. Who best to take advantage of these arbitrary conditions but the very regime the embargo is aimed against.

I would think Castro secretly wishes the embargo to continue. Why? He plays the proletarian David standing up against the Uncle Sam Goliath. Second, it gives Castro the attention as El Comandante on a pedestal he long should have been knocked off. Third, it allows him domestic political mobilization against the Yanqui threat and equally encourages global solidarity; Fourth, it may permit him and his companeros the power to control and cash in on corruption.

The U.S. trades with the People’s Republic of China and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, two countries with equally odious communist regimes. Besides the obvious commercial logic, there’s the argument that trade will encourage and foster social and eventually political openness. Perhaps. Conversely by not trading with Cuba, the Havana regime has the excuse that it under assault from the Americans and needs to enforce the suffocating political conditions in this Caribbean island.

While there’s too much political risk in tinkering with the embargo in an election year, especially given the large and vocal Cuban-American community, the next Administration must consider more creative options in dealing with the Cuban dictatorship in the twilight of Castro’s rule. Market forces may provide the answer.

Allowing American trade, tourism and contacts — let them have satellite TV, Telemundo, internet, will serve as a much more destabilizing force to the communist orthodoxy than the current embargo. Importantly it will deprive Castro the excuse that Cuba’s economic ills and political repression is justified because of Washington’s hostility.