On Oct. 29, the U.N. General Assembly overwhelmingly passed a resolution for the 17th consecutive year calling for the end of the U.S.-imposed blockade against Cuba. The resolution was nearly unanimous: 185 member states voted for the resolution and three voted against it: the United States, Israel and Palau. Micronesia and the Marshall Islands abstained.
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The General Assembly passed its first resolution against the blockade in 1992, with 59 votes for Cuba and only 3 against. Since then, support for Cuba in the General Assembly has more than tripled as non-voting and abstaining members have added their voices to the debate.
Support for the United States, on the other hand, has been stagnant from the beginning. Israel, a U.S. garrison state, has been the only consistent U.S. supporter in the General Assembly against Cuba. Palau’s vote is no mystery: The Pacific island was a U.N. trusteeship administered by the U.S. government until 1994, and is still heavily dependent on the United States. The Marshall Islands voted with the United States in 2007, but defected toward abstention this year. Governments ranging from staunch allies to outright puppets of the United States have rejected the blockade.
Despite reaffirming the global consensus against the blockade, the resolution has no teeth. The General Assembly is the only U.N. body where all member states are represented, but apart from budgetary and other administrative matters, its resolutions are non-binding. Real power is concentrated in the hands of the five permanent members of the U.S.-dominated Security Council.
Addressing representatives of U.N. member countries prior to the vote, Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque explained: “Very conservative estimates reveal that direct accumulated damages caused by the blockade of Cuba exceed 93 billion dollars, almost twice our GDP. At the current value of the dollar, this would equal no less than 224,600 million dollars. It is not difficult to imagine all that Cuba could have achieved if during these almost 50 years it hadn’t been submitted to that brutal economic war on a global scale.”
Cuba was hit particularly hard by the recent hurricane season. Thanks to its high level planning and preparedness, the loss of lives was minimal, but the economic impact has been great. According to Pérez Roque, more than 500,000 homes and thousands of schools and health institutions were affected, a third of cultivated lands were devastated and electrical and communications infrastructure was severely damaged. The blockade continues to be the greatest obstacle to recovery.
“If the United States government was really concerned about the well-being of the Cuban people, the only moral and ethical behavior would be to lift the blockade they have imposed on my country,” Pérez Roque added. (La Demajagua, Oct. 29)
Where do McCain, Obama stand?
Speaking after the vote, Pérez Roque said that he expects the next U.S. president to end the blockade against Cuba. Whether his prediction will materialize remains to be seen.
Republican presidential candidate John McCain has shown little sign of easing U.S. hostility against Cuba. Democratic candidate Barack Obama has said that Cubans living in the United States should have unrestricted rights to travel and send remittances to the island. That, however, is a far cry from lifting the blockade.
Many commercial interests within the United States would like to see the blockade lifted since restrictions on exports to Cuba amount to missed profit opportunities. However, successive administrations have favored the continuation of the blockade, sacrificing the short-term interests of a small number of capitalists for the long-term collective interests of the entire U.S. capitalist class: the complete overthrow of socialism in Cuba and the restoration of its colonial status.
An April 6, 1960, document from the U.S. State Department declared that the objective of isolating Cuba was “to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government.”
The blockade officially began in 1962 in response to the nationalizations that wrested the wealth of Cuba from U.S. corporations and put it back in the hands of the Cuban people. It remains one of the most intense blockades ever imposed on any country.
The U.S. imperialists sharply escalated the blockade after the overthrow of the Soviet Union, hoping to expedite the collapse of socialism in Cuba following the demise of its main trading partner.
The 1992 Torricelli Law placed restrictions on travel to Cuba and prohibited foreign subsidiaries of U.S. firms to trade with Cuba. The 1996 Helms-Burton Act, enacted under former-President Clinton, punished non-U.S. corporations and investors that have economic relations with Cuba. It allowed Washington to penalize foreign companies trading with Cuba or anyone “trafficking” Cuban property formerly owned by U.S. capitalists.
In May 2004, the Bush administration’s Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba made public a 458-page blueprint for the overthrow of Cuba’s socialist government. An additional report was completed in July 2006, but only 93 pages were released to the public. A secret annex could well contain military plans against Cuba. The commission created an $80 million fund to be spent on activities related to the overthrow and replacement of the Cuban government.
Should the new administration lift the blockade, that would be a welcome development for Cuba. Washington may come to terms with the unwillingness of the Cuban people to bend before U.S. economic pressure and discard the blockade as a failed policy. But for the imperialists, that will only mean a shift to new tactics—their underlying goal will remain unchanged.
Despite the severe impact of the blockade, Cuba has continued to prioritize people’s needs, guaranteeing free education, health care, food and homes to the population. These fundamental social programs have been made possible by Cuba’s system of socialist planning and distribution—the very system the U.S. blockade has tried and failed to destroy.
