America's post-Cold War embargo on Cuba is a clear example of failed international interventionism. Making sanctions work, Henry Kissinger wrote in the Los Angeles Times, "depends on the ability to define an achievable objective." Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the United States has not had such an objective in its policy toward Cuba. Our policy, intended to isolate Cuba, has isolated the United States.
This has been most blatantly demonstrated for the past 21 years by the United Nations General Assembly's annual call to lift the embargo-which Havana demagogically calls a "genocidal blockade"-because it adversely affects Cubans and the freedom of international trade. (The vote in 2012 to condemn the embargo was 188 to 3.) Cuba today does not warrant this extraordinary isolation. In 2010, former Senator Richard Lugar, then the top-ranking Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, correctly noted: "We must recognise the ineffectiveness of our current policy and deal with the Cuban regime in a way that enhances US interests."
