Last year the UN General Assembly overwhelmingly passed a resolution criticizing the impacts of the American embargo on Cuba and calling for it to be lifted for a 33rd consecutive year. In the most recent vote, 187 countries supported the non-binding resolution, while only the United States and Israel voted against it and the Ukraine abstained.
Murray Rothbard was firmly opposed to the notion of an American embargo against any nation. With that in mind, he claimed that Cuba represented the “greatest, Latin American intervention” by the US, with a very long history. He explained that the “American intervention in Cuba had begun during the Cleveland-Olney regime [1893-1897],” which adhered to a foreign policy based on the Monroe Doctrine that was first proclaimed by President James Monroe (1758-1831) on December 2, 1823. Part of the reason why the Americans originally wanted to control Cuba was due to concerns that Spain was intent on abolishing slavery on the island. Accordingly, US president James K. Polk (1795-1849) offered the Spanish Empire $100 million to buy Cuba in 1848 for the purpose of transforming it into a new slave territory. After this offer was rejected, it was subsequently renewed by President Franklin Pierce with the release of the Ostend Manifesto in 1854.
Rothbard explained that since the US attempts to buy Cuba from Spain were rebuffed, the Americans decided to support the liberation of Cuba from Spain during the Cuban War of Independence (1895–1898). He pointed out that “the great proponent of this policy was the millionaire sugar grower in Cuba, Edwin F. Atkins, a close friend of fellow Bostonian Richard Olney [Secretary of State from 1895 to 1897], and a partner of J.P. Morgan and Company,” which was “a leader in investment banking, commercial banking, financial transaction processing and asset management.” Rothbard stated that:
By the fall of 1895, Olney concluded that Spain could not win, and that, in view of the “large and important commerce between the two countries” and the “large amounts of American capital” in Cuba, the United States should execute a 180-degree shift and back the rebels, even unto recognizing Cuban independence. The fact that such recognition would certainly lead to war with Spain did not seem worth noting. The road to war with Spain had begun, a road that would reach its logical conclusion three years later.
Unfortunately for Cuba, it did not become a sovereign country at the conclusion of the Cuban War of Independence in 1898, which it won with the assistance of the US during the Spanish-American War. Instead, the US transformed it into a neo-colony. In fact, the island became “a vassal state in a condition even more deplorable than that under Spanish colonialism.” Ultimately, Cuba, along with Puerto Rico, were “the last countries in Latin America to wage war for national independence. Although they fought the longest, both islands were also the only Latin American nations that suffered defeat. Without a single day of freedom, they changed from Spanish colonies to colonies of the United States.” Spain dominated and exploited Cuban natural resources and subjected the native population to forced labor from 1510 until the end of the Spanish-American War in 1898. Then, the US exerted its imperial power to exploit Cuba’s resources and dictate its domestic and foreign policies until the Socialist Revolution in 1959. In other words, 1959 marked the first time since 1510 that Cubans were not subjected to serfdom and exploitation by a foreign power.
Prior to the Socialist Revolution, Cuba was ruled by US-backed Fulgencio Batista (1901–1973), one of the most brutal and repressive dictators in Latin American history. The US played a major role in strengthening Batista’s regime in the form of military assistance. In fact, the State Department published Foreign Relations of the United States 1958–1960, Volume VI, Cuba, which contained various documents, telegrams, memorandums, and reports demonstrating the close association between Washington and the dictator Batista. Additionally, while he was still a senator in 1960, John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) pointed out that Americans fully supported Batista’s “reign of terror” when he stated:
…perhaps most disastrous of our failures, was the decision to give stature and support to one of the most bloody and repressive dictatorships in the long history of Latin American repression. Fulgencio Batista murdered 20,000 Cubans in 7 years - a greater proportion of the Cuban population than the proportion of Americans who died in both World Wars, and he turned democratic Cuba into a complete police state - destroying every individual liberty.
He also noted that spokesmen from the Eisenhower administration:
…publicly praised Batista - hailed him as a staunch ally and a good friend - at a time when Batista was murdering thousands, destroying the last vestiges of freedom, and stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from the Cuban people, and we failed to press for free elections.
Kennedy further added that:
…instead of holding out a helping hand of friendship to the desperate people of Cuba, nearly all our aid was in the form of weapons assistance - assistance which merely strengthened the Batista dictatorship - assistance which completely failed to advance the economic welfare of the Cuban people… But Mr. Nixon [who was the vice president from 1953 to 1961 under President Dwight D. Eisenhower]…was “very much impressed with the competence and stability” of the Batista dictatorship… We stepped up a constant stream of weapons and munitions to Batista - justified in the name of hemispheric defense, when, in fact, their only real use was to crush the dictator’s opposition, and even when the Cuban civil war was raging - until March of 1958 - the administration continued to send arms to Batista which were turned against the rebels - increasing anti-American feeling and helping to strengthen the influence of the Communists.
John F. Kennedy also pointed out that even when the American government stopped sending arms to Cuba, their “military missions stayed to train Batista’s soldiers for the fight against the revolution - refusing to leave until Castro’s forces were actually in the streets of Havana.” He further elaborated that “all officers in Cuba’s air force, nearly all army, navy, and police officials, and complete units of the troops that fought against the rebels in the Sierra Maestra were trained in U.S. military schools” in an effort to prevent the victory of Cuban Revolution, which ultimately swept away the tyrannical neocolonial regime of Batista.
In a 1963 interview with French journalist and author, Jean Daniel (1920–2020), who was the founder and executive editor of Le Nouvel Observateur, President Kennedy stated the following:
I believe that there is no country in the world, including the African regions, including any and all the countries under colonial domination, where economic colonization, humiliation and exploitation were worse than in Cuba, in part owing to my country’s policies during the Batista regime. I believe that we created, built and manufactured the Castro movement out of whole cloth and without realizing it. I believe that the accumulation of these mistakes has jeopardized all of Latin America… I can assure you that I have understood the Cubans. I approved the proclamation which Fidel Castro made in the Sierra Maestra, when he justifiably called for justice and especially yearned to rid Cuba of corruption. I will go even further: to some extent it is as though Batista was the incarnation of a number of sins on the part of the United States. Now we shall have to pay for those sins. In the matter of the Batista regime, I am in agreement with the first Cuban revolutionaries.
Rothbard shared similar views with John F. Kennedy with respect to American support for Batista’s brutal regime. He also recognized that “after virtually installing the dictator Batista in Cuba, the U.S. tried desperately to oust the Communist Castro regime, by actions ranging from the CIA-engineered Bay of Pigs invasion to CIA-Mafia attempts to assassinate Castro.” In fact, during the invasion at the Bay of Pigs, which commenced on April 17, 1961, during the presidency of Kennedy, 1,400 Cuban exiles—who were trained, armed and funded by the CIA—attacked Cuba in an attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro and his socialist regime. Rothbard emphasized that:
…the strong Rockefeller influence on Kennedy foreign policy is best seen in the fact that the new president continued Allen W. Dulles as head of the CIA. It was at the urging of Dulles that Kennedy decided to go ahead with the CIA’s previously planned [in 1959] and disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. Fidel Castro’s regime had recently nationalized a large number of American-owned sugar companies in Cuba. It might be noted that Dulles’s old law firm of Sullivan & Cromwell served as general counsel for two of these large sugar companies, the Francisco Sugar Co. and the Manati Sugar Co., and that one of the board members of these firms was Gerald F. Beal, president of the Rockefeller-oriented J. Henry Schroder Bank, of which Dulles had once been a director.
To further illustrate the influence of American businessmen and Wall Street on the development of American government policies towards Cuba, Rothbard explained:
…not only that John L. Loeb of the Loeb, Rhoades investment bank, whose wife was a member of the Lehman banking family, owned a large block of stock in the nationalized Compania Azucarera Atlantica del Golfo, a big sugar plantation in Cuba, while one of the directors of the latter company was Harold F. Linder, vice-chairman of the General American Investors Company, dominated by Lehman Brothers and Lazard Freres investment bankers. Linder was appointed head of the Export-Import Bank by President Kennedy.
History is testament to the fact that, since the 1960s, Washington has made numerous attempts to destroy Cuba’s socialist regime, with brief exceptions during the presidencies of Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama, who sought to normalize relations with the island nation to some extent. Some of the measures aimed at destabilizing the country included: placing Cuba on the US list of State Sponsors of Terrorism; preventing Cuba from accessing credit and loans in international financial markets, including financial assistance from the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and other international financial institutions; banning the import of any products containing Cuban inputs from third countries; encouraging “countries that conduct trade with Cuba to restrict their trade and credit relations with Cuba”; preventing “any transaction between a U.S.-owned or -controlled firm in a third country and Cuba”; prohibiting “vessels which enter Cuba to engage in trade from loading or unloading any freight in the United States within 180 days after departure from Cuba”; forbidding or restricting the remittances from family members in the US and other countries that many Cubans depend on, including by enacting policies that led to the closure of all 407 Western Union offices on the island; stopping flights between the United States and Cuba; imposing travel restrictions; discouraging foreign companies from investing in Cuba via the Helms-Burton Act; fining foreign banks that allow Cuba to transfer money in order to pay for its imports; sanctioning shipping firms and vessels transporting Venezuelan oil to Cuba; and, implementing restrictions on Cuba’s importation of life-saving medicines.
This suffocating economic blockade cannot be justified by any libertarian ideas, theories, or policies. Ultimately, the embargo has been a failed American war policy of the 1960s, which has not only caused immense damage to the Cuban economy and brought misery to its people, but has also seriously hindered the island nation’s transition to a free-market system.
