Cuba: We’ve made this mistake before

In defending his decision to normalize relations with Cuba, President Obama pointed out that we have such relationships with other communist countries such as Vietnam and China.  What the president either does not know or will not acknowledge is that conditions, specifically slave labor, have not improved in those countries since we normalized our relationships with them.  Similarly, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) is saying that opening trade with Cuba will result in more freedom for Cubans.  We do not have to guess how this will turn out.  Normalized relations with communist countries has been not only been bad for America but also for the people living under the brutal rule of tyranny. 

Prior to granting “Permanent Normal Trade Relations” to Vietnam and China we at least conducted annual human rights reviews of those counties before going forward with our trade agreements.   But in the mid-1990s and early 2000s, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Republican and Democratic congressional leaders acquiesced to the Chamber of Commerce and passed legislation doing away with the annual reviews.  Their arguments for doing so were exactly the same ones we’re hearing today with regard to Cuba:  having a relationship with them will change them and usher in a new era of freedom and prosperity for all. 

{mosads}The results?  Over five million U.S. manufacturing jobs have been lost.  American wages have decreased.  Mom and pop stores have disappeared in favor of huge big-box multi-national corporations, stamping out any variety and individual characteristics of American towns.  Saddest of all, working conditions in China and Vietnam are horrendous and getting worse.  A recent BBC report details the increasingly common practice in Vietnam of luring children from country provinces to Saigon to slave in garment factories where they work from 6AM to midnight seven days a week.  They do not get bathroom breaks and do not see their families.  Similar practices abound in China.  These conditions are not widely reported because the Communist governments do not allow visitors into most factories.  Foreign reporters who reveal negative stories about working conditions and the Communist regimes get their visas revoked and local reporters who tell the truth end up in jail.  

We have made a deal with the devil:  Cheap goods for Americans and money for some big business leaders in exchange for our silence and complicity with their abusive practices.  In spite of what many politicians and the Chamber of Commerce say, doing trade with dictatorial regimes is not “free.”  When suicide nets have to be placed outside the windows of giant factories in China so that the captive laborers cannot plunge to their deaths out of sheer desperation, as is the case with Apple factories in Longhua, something is wrong.  

And things have not only gotten worse for the factory workers in these countries, but in spite of our politicians’ assurances that a new era of freedom was right around the corner, there’s also been a brutal crackdown on democracy activists, bloggers, and the press.  According to Freedom House, a non-partisan human rights organization:  

“In 2013, Vietnam continued its intense crackdown on free expression online, in print, and in the public. The state convicted more than twice as many dissidents for activities like “conducting propaganda against the state” in 2013 than it did in 2012… The government tightly controls the media, silencing critics through the courts and other means of harassment. A 1999 law requires journalists to pay damages to groups or individuals found to have been harmed by press articles, even if the reports are accurate.” 

This, in spite of the fact that in 2000, when he permanently normalized relations with Vietnam, backed up by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), then-President Clinton announced:  

“With this agreement, Vietnam has agreed to speed its opening to the world, to subject important decisions to the rule of law and the international trading system, to increase the flow of information to its people by inviting competition in to accelerate the rise of a free market economy and the private sector within Vietnam itself.” 

At best it was wishful thinking.  At worst it condemned untold numbers of democracy activists, dissidents, and those who looked to us as the “city on the hill” to a world of suicide nets and despair.  Normalizing relations with communist regimes does not make them free. It only makes America complicit in their brutality.   

Dugan worked on the House Foreign Affairs Committee from 2006 – 2008 and for Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.).