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Argentina's President Javier Milei, an outspoken champion of free markets and human liberty, proved his bona fides again last week. He dismissed Foreign Minister Diana Mondino after Argentina voted in the United Nations to condemn the US economic embargo on Cuba. The vote was 187-2 — the only country to stand with the United States was Israel — and it marked the 32d time that the General Assembly had all but unanimously denounced an American policy first put in place by John F. Kennedy.
It isn't often that a foreign minister gets sacked for aligning with the views of nearly every government on earth. Then again, it isn't often that a country has a president like Milei, who is prepared to stand against the world if that is what freedom and morality demand. And when it comes to Cuba and the US embargo, what freedom and morality demand is that censure be directed at the oldest and cruelest dictatorship in the Western Hemisphere — not at the nation that for more than six decades has provided safe haven to millions of refugees fleeing that Caribbean tyranny.
Mondino cannot say she wasn't on notice. Milei's address to the General Assembly in September was a ringing declaration that the defense of liberty worldwide would henceforth be a pillar of his country's foreign policy. "Argentina will not support any policy that implies the restriction of individual freedoms, of trade, or the violation of the natural rights of individuals, no matter who promotes it or how much consensus that institution has," he asserted. "From this day on, know that the Argentine Republic will abandon the position of historical neutrality that characterized us and will be at the forefront of the struggle in defense of freedom." He chastised the world body for allowing "bloody dictatorships such as Cuba and Venezuela to join the Human Rights Council without the slightest reproach." If Argentina's foreign minister didn't get the message, she had no one to blame but herself.
Milei is not given to euphemisms nor does he pander to conventional wisdom. During his campaign for president last year, one of his favorite catchphrases was "¡Viva la libertad, carajo!" Translation: "Long live freedom, damn it!"
The restoration of freedom in Cuba will never be a priority of the United Nations, which is an organization of governments, not the people they govern. Even if it were a priority, it would not be achieved by abolishing the US embargo. History has made that emphatically clear.
When President Barack Obama announced in 2014 that he planned to normalize relations with the regime in Havana, he claimed the rapprochement would uphold America's "commitment to liberty and democracy" and result "in making the lives of ordinary Cubans a little bit easier, more free, more prosperous." He repeated the message several months later, when he authorized the reopening of the US embassy in Havana. Life on the island might not be "transformed overnight," Obama conceded, but he was certain that more engagement was the best way to advance freedom and human rights for Cuba's people. "This," Obama said, "is what change looks like."
But it wasn't.
Following the Obama demarche, Havana's harassment of dissidents intensified. There was a crackdown on churches and religious groups. Within months, according to Amnesty International, human rights activists and protesters were being rounded up and jailed at the highest rate in years. Especially shocking were the violent attacks by the regime's goons on members of the Ladies in White, an organization of wives and mothers of jailed pro-democracy advocates. The women, dressed in white, attend Mass each week, then walk peacefully through the streets to protest the government's brutality. Their freedom wasn't expanded as a result of Obama's policy; it was crushed even further.
Bottom line: Lifting restrictions on US trade with and travel to Cuba made life worse for ordinary Cubans. That was because the Cuban government, which deprives its people not only of political liberty but of economic liberty too, has long owned or controlled nearly all major businesses in the country. Authorizing more business with Cuba, therefore, meant putting more wealth into the coffers of the regime. And by making the dictatorship richer, the Obama détente made it stronger and crueler.For decades, politicians, journalists, think tankers, and editorial boards have parroted the claim that the US embargo is responsible for Cuba's misery and that if only it were repealed, the island would experience such a wave of tourists, consumer goods, and democratic ideas from America that it would wash away Havana's communist fortifications.
But if commerce and tourism had the power to topple the regime, they would have done so long ago. The US embargo, after all, is highly porous. It doesn't prevent the export of hundreds of millions of dollars worth of goods to Cuba each year, mostly foodstuffs but also whiskey, cement, and even newsprint. Notwithstanding the embargo, the United States has in recent years been one of Cuba's largest sources of imports. And, of course, Cuba has always been free to trade with the rest of the world.
What the embargo prevents is not doing business with Cuba but doing business with Cuba on credit. American producers may export agricultural commodities to Cuba, as long as they are paid in cash. Exports to Cuba are barred from federal credit guarantees and export promotion programs, which are forms of corporate welfare. Contrary to popular mythology, the embargo is not rooted in vindictiveness. It is rooted in the fact that after Fidel Castro imposed communism on the island, he nationalized — that is, stole — American refineries, sugar mills, phone companies, power generators, banks, and other properties worth billions of dollars.
I have in the past mentioned a visit I paid in 2002 to Oswaldo Payá, the courageous founder of Cuba's Christian Liberation Movement and, at the time, Cuba's foremost human rights dissident. (He was later killed in a car crash under highly suspicious circumstances.) When I asked him whether the US embargo should be scrapped, he thought for a moment, then replied: "Tiende tu mano a Cuba, pero primero pide que le desaten las manos a los cubanos." Extend your hands to Cuba — but first untie the hands of the Cuban people.
It is shameful that the UN would choose to stand with the dictators in Havana instead of the nation that has done more for the freedom of Cuba's people than any other. It is doubly shameful that the governments that voted in favor of the resolution included the former communist satrapies of Eastern Europe that gained their liberty when the United States triumphed in the Cold War a third of a century ago.
Milei, to his great credit, doesn't care how many governments Argentina must oppose to defend liberty. "Our country is categorically opposed to the Cuban dictatorship and … condemns all regimes that perpetuate the violation of human rights and individual freedoms," his office said in a statement last week. His previous foreign minister might not have gotten the message, but that isn't likely to be a problem any longer.
Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe, from which this is reprinted with permission.
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