CUBANS ROSE UP. AMERICA SHOULD STEP UP.

• Author: Boehm, Eric
• Position: POLITICS

AFTER THOUSANDS OF Cubans poured into the streets in early July to protest the island nation's Communist government, President Joe Biden said America "stands firmly" with the people of Cuba.

The demonstrations were prompted by short-term shortages of food and COVID-19 vaccines, as well as long-term dissatisfaction with the hardships created by Cuba's strict economic controls. Protesters clashed with Cuban police, and the government cracked down on the island's already-limited internet access in order to quell the uprisings that were organized spontaneously over social media.

Biden's words of support for the protesters--some of whom waved American flags as they demanded "libertad"--are nice. Actions would be better. And there is plenty the U.S. could, and should, do to aid Cubans in their fight against authoritarian communism.

For starters, Congress could lift the 59-year-old U.S. trade embargo against the island country.

Some leftists blame the embargo for impoverishing Cuba, but this is misdirection. Communism has destroyed Cuba's once-prosperous economy. Still, the trade embargo, in place since 1962, has plainly failed to accomplish its primary goal of toppling the Cuban regime. If anything, it has helped to strengthen it by giving former President Fidel Castro and his successors a way to deflect blame for communism's failures--a strategy that Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel also deployed during the initial wave of protests in July.

From America's perspective, what has the embargo accomplished? That it remains in place nearly three decades after the fall of the Soviet Union suggests that America has failed to learn the primary lesson of the Cold War: Economic development is the best weapon to aim at communism.

Americans who support the embargo argue that increased trade and tourism would enrich and strengthen the Communist regime while failing to aid most Cubans. "There is zero reason to delude ourselves into believing that 'engagement' will get the tyrants in Havana to change their ways," Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), the son of Cuban immigrants, wrote in January.

But where is the evidence that disengagement is working? Demanding political reforms before economic changes is exactly backward--and again ignores the lessons of the Cold War.

Economic freedom is the key to other kinds of freedom. Consider what happened when the Obama administration loosened some of the rules on American travel to Cuba as part of an effort to reestablish...