Why Washington Keeps Doubling Down on a Broken Cuba Policy

“Cuba has always loomed large in the U.S. imagination,” says Mikael Wolfe, director of Stanford University’s Cuba Observatory. For decades, U.S. policy toward Cuba has been shaped by sanctions, pressure and political narratives that rarely face serious scrutiny. Wolfe explains how those narratives were built, why they persist and who pays the price.

We ask him why, if coercive measures haven’t worked for more than half a century, does Washington keep doubling down?

TRANSCRIPT

"Hi, everyone. Welcome to Belly of the Beast. My name is Liz Oliva Fernández, and today we are going to be speaking with Mikael Wolfe," said Liz Oliva Fernández, journalist with Belly of the Beast.

"Mikael, thank you very much for being with us today," she added.

"You are welcome. It's my pleasure to be here," said Mikael Wolfe, director of Stanford University's Cuba Observatory.

"I love Cuba. Of course, I love its culture, I love its people. But you can see that people are suffering. People are struggling. Even as a foreigner, as an American who comes with dollars, I can go to a local store, mipymes called in Cuba, and I can get just about anything I want, just as I would at a convenience store in the U.S.," Wolfe said.

"But for most Cubans, that's out of their price range because of very low salaries. So you can see that now there's a real two-tiered economy in Cuba. And I attribute a lot of that, obviously not all of it, to the policy of U.S. sanctions on Cuba," he continued.

"What are the implications of U.S. sanctions for a country like Cuba?" asked Oliva Fernández.

"They're enormous, because if you look at the relative size of the Cuban economy versus the U.S. economy, Cuba is tiny," Wolfe said.

"So when the United States, which is the world's largest economy, still larger than China's, that has both outsized influence on the world's currency, the dollar is still the world's primary currency, has outsized influence on all the lending institutions, IMF, World Bank, and so on and so forth, it puts Cuba at a huge disadvantage," the historian added.

"The sanctions make it much, much harder for the Cuban government to obtain basic supplies of anything, and that includes food and medicine. Even though there's a so-called exemption on those goods on the part of the U.S. government, it's still very difficult for the Cuban government to get credit for these things, to import them in the quantities that they need," he said.

"And then because the sanctions are extraterritorial, meaning that they apply everywhere, not just bilaterally between the U.S. and Cuba, it makes it harder for other countries or other companies, non-U.S. countries and non-U.S. companies, to sell freely to Cuba the way they would to any other country. So it just makes everything more difficult, everything more expensive for Cuba to obtain," Wolfe continued.

"And sometimes it can't obtain anything because the sanctions will apply a penalty of some sort to any entity that tries to circumvent those sanctions. There's just no way that Cuba could possibly be able to circumvent these kinds of sanctions," he added.

"Is it possible for other countries around the world to survive the embargo that the United States has imposed on Cuba for more than 60 years now?" Oliva Fernández asked.

"There are very few countries that could do it. It requires extraordinary ways of survival. It requires ingenuity, creativity, thinking outside the box, all those things that Cubans have been able to do," Wolfe said.

"But there's only so much you can do. Now, there are other countries that have survived this kind of sanctions regime. North Korea is one country. But North Korea is a very different country than Cuba. It's very closed. People often compare Cuba to North Korea, but that's a false comparison," the professor said.

"It's also had very close ties to China. It's also part, it's a split country, with South Korea and North Korea, so it still has some kind of relationship with the South. So you're talking about a very different situation," Wolfe explained.

"So as a policy, as a matter of policy, if the policy is to overthrow a government by making its people suffer, it's completely failed. It's failed both in North Korea, it's failed in Cuba," he said.

"What is the difference between the sanctions on Cuba and other countries, like those that you already mentioned?" the journalist asked.

"Well, Cuba's is so systematic. It's so comprehensive. It's complex. There are just hundreds of rules and regulations. It's probably been the longest lasting. In terms of a sanctioned country, certainly Cuba is right up there," Wolfe said.

"There's no reason why U.S. and Cuba should not have a normal trading and investment relationship like they did before 1959. They're right next to each other, after all," he added.

"But critics of the Cuban government say the embargo is not a big deal because Cuba can just do business with the rest of the world. Is there any truth to that?" Oliva Fernández asked.

"There's always a grain of truth. Sure, Cuba does do business with other countries, does do business with, let's say, China. You can go to Cuba and find a lot of Chinese goods there. The question is, is it a normal commerce? Is it the level of commerce that you would expect free of the sanctions? No, it is not because there are so many restrictions on what Cuba can do because of this extraterritorial application of the sanctions," Wolfe responded.

"And of course, Cuba is a poor country. There's no way that Cuba can pay these prices, right? And there's no reason why it should have to. Virtually no other country has to do that, which is why the entire world community condemns this policy every single year," he continued.

"And you just look at the countries who vote against it. We're not talking about communist countries. We're talking about capitalist countries. France, Britain, Germany, Japan, Italy, you name it. These countries don't like this policy because they don't want to be told who they can or cannot trade with or invest in, right? They say, you have a bilateral issue with Cuba. Keep it bilateral. Don't make it extraterritorial," Wolfe said.

"But it has been more than 30 years that Cuba has been present in the resolution against these sanctions at the United Nations, but nothing has changed so far. Why?" Oliva Fernández asked.

"Well, it did change under Obama for a couple of years, right? That's where there was the perfect storm. You have a president that was interested enough in changing this policy, not necessarily for the reasons I would. My reasons would be it's against international law. You should just respect international law. His reason, Obama's, was that it doesn't work," Wolfe said.

"It hasn't worked for 50 some odd years when he was in power. And, therefore, we should try something else to change the Cuban government, regime change, right? So his was a tactical decision, that this policy should change because he recognized it hurts the Cuban people, it doesn't change the Cuban government, and it hurts Americans because they can't freely travel to Cuba, they can't freely do business with Cuba because there are plenty of business interests that want to do business in Cuba," the director explained.

"But that was short-lived. And unfortunately, when Trump came to power, he reversed that policy. Unless the political interests in the United States change, unless they can be convinced that this policy does not work, is not in the U.S. national interest, then the United States will continue to defy world opinion because it can," he said.

"It's the military and economic hegemon of the world. No other country can force the United States to obey international law, unfortunately," Wolfe added.

"How have U.S. sanctions changed in the last 20 years?" the journalist asked.

"Well, since Obama started to loosen them, it's wrong to say Obama tried to normalize relations completely with Cuba. It was called more of a rapprochement, as they say in French," Wolfe said.

"But still, just that opening, that loosening of the sanctions, and especially taking Cuba off the state terrorism list, which is an absurd designation. There's no evidence whatsoever that Cuba supports terrorism. And never mind that the United States has supported terrorism against Cuba," he continued.

"One of the big differences in the last, let's say ten years, is that Trump put Cuba back on that list, which then amplifies the sanctions exponentially because it flags Cuba as this dangerous country that you cannot do anything with, you cannot send any kind of loan to, credit for," Wolfe said.

"I've experienced it myself when I tried to get on a website that has to do with Cuba or if I'm in Cuba itself, and I tried to get back into my class website at Stanford, it says, this is subject to trade restrictions, or something like that. And that probably has to do with the terrorism list more than anything else," the professor added.

"And that happened to you in Cuba?" Oliva Fernández asked.

"Yeah, in Havana, because I needed to send a message to my class from Havana. So I tried to get into my Canvas website. Canvas is a very common website used by universities, and I could not get into my own Canvas website in Havana. Am I a threat to the national security of United States? I'm a professor at Stanford," Wolfe said.

"So this policy just has been amplified under Trump, plus he put all sorts of new other kinds of sanctions on it, on Cuba, just out of spite, basically, following the lead of Marco Rubio, who's now [the secretary of state]," he continued.

"It's because Cuba does not cry uncle to the United States. It has nothing to do with the kind of regime Cuba has. If you want to talk about authoritarianism, take a look at Egypt, take a look at Saudi Arabia, take a look at El Salvador right now, a really bad autocracy that is violating human rights much worse than Cuba does. So it has nothing to do with Cuba's human rights record or authoritarianism," Wolfe said.

"It's simply a policy saying, 'We don't like what you did. We don't like that you resist what we do, and therefore, we will punish you,'" he added.

"What has been the impact of Cuba being on the State Sponsors of Terrorism list?" Oliva Fernández asked.

"I just know that banks, international banks, pretty much just stopped lending to Cuba as a result of it. I mean, at least with the pre-SSOT, State Sponsor of Terrorism list, sanctions, I think more banks were willing to lend to Cuba, obviously not on good terms because there [were] still sanctions in place, but it still was a little bit easier," Wolfe said.

"More countries could still find ways to trade, if they were really determined, or invest in Cuba, but with the SSOT designation, it just makes it so much harder. It just makes Cuba totally unappealing for most countries and companies, they just don't want to run the risk of saying, 'Oh, I'm doing business with a terrorist country,'" he said.

"Imagine that. And when the United States says that and designates it, it becomes part of a media narrative with the dominance of U.S.-based corporate media," Wolfe added.

"Yeah. And also, what evidence do they have that Cuba actually sponsors terrorism?" Oliva Fernández asked.

"They have none. It comes from Cuba actually brokering a peace accord in Colombia. Because it needed to be able to talk to one of the rebel groups, which the United States designated as a terrorist group, just because it was talking to that rebel group to be able to come to a peace accord in Colombia, which the United States was officially supporting, Trump managed to use that as an excuse to get Cuba back on the terrorism list," Wolfe said.

"It's totally absurd. That's the only evidence. And it's not even evidence," he added.

"Yeah. There are a lot of people who will say, 'What is so special about Cuba that the U.S. has been trying to overthrow the Cuban government for more than six decades now?'" the journalist said.

"Yeah, that's a really good question. That's one I ask myself as a historian because you look at the case of Vietnam. The United States actually sent troops, tens of thousands of troops, hundreds of thousands of troops, to Vietnam to stop it from becoming communist and was not able to defeat it," Wolfe said.

"It was actually kicked out of Vietnam at the cost of over 50,000 U.S. soldiers. Never mind how many Vietnamese, millions of Vietnamese, of course, were killed as a result of the war," he continued.

"But despite all of that, 15 years after the end of the Vietnam War, U.S. normalized relations with Vietnam and Vietnam was still communist. So what's the difference? I think there are two things. One is the geographic proximity of Cuba to the United States. Cuba's always loomed large in the U.S. imagination," Wolfe said.

"It probably would have been annexed to the United States in the 19th century if the interests had been there, the way that ultimately Puerto Rico became part of the United States, other territories became part of the United States. Cuba was special because of the sugar interests in the United States that didn't want Cuba to be annexed and other reasons, maybe its size was a bit bigger," he explained.

"Also, Fidel Castro, just for the United States, was such a threat in so many ways because he was charismatic. He had such popular support in the 1960s. He presented a different model of development, which wasn't completely Soviet. It actually was quite eclectic in the '60s. Later, it became much more Soviet, and so he was deemed a threat," the historian said.

"And then, of course, a lot of Cubans of the middle and upper classes mostly, the first migration wave, went to Florida, and then they became a political force in their own right, in the very electorally important state of Florida," Wolfe continued.

"So I think those are the two main things, the geographic proximity and the presence of a very large Cuban-American community in Florida that has been whipped up to oppose the Cuban government in ways that are actually kind of authoritarian within the Miami community itself. Authoritarianism under so-called freedom, you could say," he added.

"Is it possible for Cuba to progress economically even when it is subject to sanctions?" Oliva Fernández asked.

"I don't think so. I mean, I just talked to an economist in Havana, British, who worked for The Economist, the big British-based economic magazine, and then she's now a professor of economics. She studied this. She said even a genius leadership on the Cuban economy could not get themselves out of this crisis, even if they were the best economic managers ever. And no country has the best economic managers, not the United States," Wolfe said.

"Exactly," the journalist responded.

"There was inflation here in the United States of 9%, which is nothing compared to the hyperinflation of Latin America, and it may have been the reason Trump got elected, right? Biden couldn't get that inflation down fast enough, so Harris couldn't run on, 'Hey, we got inflation down,' right? So you can imagine, if the United States can't economically manage things so it can reelect its own government, how the heck do you expect Cuba, a tiny country with one of the most severe set of sanctions on it, to be able to manage its way out of this crisis?" Wolfe said.

"There's plenty to criticize, certainly. There are definitely unforced errors that the Cuban leadership makes. But the problem is that it's in a context in which any tiny error becomes amplified so big that it affects the entire country and there's no way to recover from it. Other countries, at least, they make a mistake, but they have more room for maneuver. They can recover. There's more margin for error. There's no such margin for Cuba," he concluded.