The United States and Cuba share a complex, fractious, interconnected history. Before 1959, the United States was the island nation's largest trading partner. But in swift reaction to Cuba's communist revolution, the United States severed all economic ties between the two nations, initiating the longest trade embargo in modern history, one that continues to the presentday. The Cuban Embargo examines the changing politics of U.S. policy toward Cuba over the more than four decades since the revolution.While the U.S. embargo policy itself has remained relatively stable since its origins during the heart of the Cold War, the dynamics that produce and govern that policy have changed dramatically. Although originally dominated by the executive branch, the president's tight grip over policy has gradually ceded to the influence of interest groups, members of Congress, and specific electoral campaigns and goals. Haney and Vanderbush track the emergence of the powerful Cuban American National Foundation as an ally of the Reagan administration, and they explore the more recent development of an anti-embargo coalition within both civil society and Congress, even as the Helms-Burton Act and the George W. Bush administration have further tightened the embargo. Ultimately they demonstrate how the battles over Cuba policy, as with much U.S. foreign policy, have as much to do with who controls the policy as with the shape of that policy itself.

Economic sanctions have been used as an instrument of American foreign policy ever since the Taft administration adopted the Dollar Diplomacy. This dissertation analyzes the trade Embargo the United States imposed upon Cuba after the Revolution from different perspectives: from the political, considering the main guidelines of American foreign policy toward Latin America, especially during the Cold War, and from the juridical, considering different perspectives of customary international law. Since the embargo was imposed only after American property had been expropriated without compensation, the dissertation analyzes the legality of expropriation, seen from the perspective of both capital-importing and capital-exporting countries, and the legality of economic sanctions as a legitimate peaceful reprisal. Due to the fact that the American embargo against Cuba is quasi-total, that is, consists of a number of different economic sanctions, it is the aim of this dissertation to analyze each of these, and finally, to assess the effectiveness of economic sanctions as an instrument of foreign policy. Many books and articles have been written about this very controversial embargo, almost as old as the Cuban Revolution itself. For the Cubans, it constitutes and "economic blockade", and a violation of Cuba's right to free trade; for the Americans, it is a reprisal for the confiscation of American property. Nonetheless, since the embargo, as stated above, is not a sanction itself but a number of different economic sanctions, it is the aim of this dissertation to analyze each of the sanctions that comprise the embargo and its legality, according to customary international law. Another aim of this dissertation is to prove why the American embargo against Cuba has only enhanced Castro's power and further centralized it. A brief chapter about the economic sanctions the United States imposed upon Chile under President Salvador Allende and the fall of his regime serves to compare the two cases with some similarities where sanctions were applied- in the first without success and in the second with success. Finally, the dissertation aims to prove that a lifting of the American embargo against Cuba is highly unlikely unless there is a change of regime in that nation of the Caribbean.

History is being made in U.S.-Cuban relations. Now in paperback and updated to tell the real story behind the stunning December 17, 2014, announcement by President Obama and President Castro of their move to restore full diplomatic relations, this powerful book is essential to understanding ongoing efforts toward normalization in a new era of engagement. Challenging the conventional wisdom of perpetual conflict and aggression between the United States and Cuba since 1959, Back Channel to Cuba chronicles a surprising, untold history of bilateral efforts toward rapprochement and reconciliation. William M. LeoGrande and Peter Kornbluh here present a remarkably new and relevant account, describing how, despite the intense political clamor surrounding efforts to improve relations with Havana, negotiations have been conducted by every presidential administration since Eisenhower's through secret, back-channel diplomacy. From John F. Kennedy's offering of an olive branch to Fidel Castro after the missile crisis, to Henry Kissinger's top secret quest for normalization, to Barack Obama's promise of a new approach, LeoGrande and Kornbluh uncovered hundreds of formerly secret U.S. documents and conducted interviews with dozens of negotiators, intermediaries, and policy makers, including Fidel Castro and Jimmy Carter. They reveal a fifty-year record of dialogue and negotiations, both open and furtive, that provides the historical foundation for the dramatic breakthrough in U.S.-Cuba ties.

Essay from the year 2018 in the subject Economics - Foreign Trade Theory, Trade Policy, grade: 1, , language: English, abstract: For half a century now, Cuba has been facing an economic, financial, and commercial embargo imposed by the United States. When Cuba nationalized foreign property and businesses (nationalization of American-owned oil refineries in Cuba) in the 1960s, the Unites States government imposed an economic sanction against Cuba by stopping sugar cane imports from the country. Moreover, the scope of the sanction has widened over the years comprising of economic, financial, and commercial sanctions. In 1960, the US came up with a policy to isolate the island nation through a number of economic and financial sanctions such as the trade embargo and financial transactions, freezing of Cuba government assets in the US, and prohibition of financial transactions with Cuba. International forums including the UN General Assembly and the International Community have continuously condemned the ongoing embargo against Cuba because it violates international law such as the human rights. The various US administrations have made attempts to correct the Cuba embargo, for instance the Clinton Administration (1998), to enhance direct flights to Cuba, streamlining of commercial sale of medicine, equipment, and medical supplies to Cuba and resumption of cash remittances by the US nationals in order to support their relatives in Cuba. In 1999, the Bush administration further implemented policies intended to help Cuba people. An example is the broadening of cash remittances to ensure that all the US residents can send cash to Cuba and loosening travel bans for a number of traveler categories such as sports activities, religious, and professional researchers. The Bush administration, on the other hand, also tightened the sanctions by isolating Cuba through a number of economic sanctions.