Maximum pressure on Cuba has become strategic overkill

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The existence of a national security threat is not a blank check for unlimited economic warfare. Yet that is overwhelmingly the driving position of U.S. policy toward Cuba.

The island nation certainly displays security concerns that deserve an American response. But there is a significant difference between a targeted economic pressure campaign and all-out economic warfare. Washington has clearly crossed that line, now embracing a level of pressure whose humanitarian risks have become wildly disproportionate to the actual threat Cuba poses.

Cuba is an authoritarian regime. It represses political dissent, cooperates with U.S. adversaries and maintains relationships with Russia, China and Iran. It could certainly be concluded that those realities present a legitimate national security concern for the United States. They may even justify targeted sanctions and the leveraging of America’s economic power against those directly responsible for threatening U.S. interests.

What they do not justify is the position that a threat, no matter the severity, can warrant the most aggressive economic campaign Washington can possibly wage.

There is an obvious difference between sanctioning Cuba’s military leadership and clearly linked entities to our adversaries, and imposing the type of indiscriminate economic pain that overwhelmingly impacts the civilians trying to lead honest lives. One directly targets the actual source of the threat. The other accepts sweeping collateral damage for millions of ordinary Cubans who had no role in creating it.

That distinction matters because economic warfare is not free. Every ounce of added pressure carries costs. The more comprehensive the pressure, the greater the humanitarian risks become. Those risks may be justifiable if Washington is confronting an existential threat to the United States. They become far more difficult to justify when addressing a country whose principal dangers do not pose significant risks to America.

Some have recently pointed to reports that Cuba has acquired hundreds of attack drones as evidence that the U.S. needs to act immediately. Washington should be able to see through this clear propaganda. One cannot reasonably assert that Cuba is about to launch a large-scale strike against the U.S. A marginal security concern should not be used to justify unlimited economic coercion.

The problem with maximum-pressure economic warfare is not that it can’t ever be justified. There certainly are circumstances that may justify extraordinary economic pressure. Cuba is simply not that case.

Washington is taking an approach where the downside risks have become almost impossible to justify. Economic warfare of this kind does not only punish governments. It harms ordinary people. As living conditions continue to deteriorate, power shortages worsen and economic hardship deepens, the humanitarian consequences become increasingly untenable to blame only on the Cuban regime. Whether those consequences are intended is beside the point. They are obvious.

Yet another nationwide collapse of Cuba’s electric grid this week, leaving approximately 10 million people without power, is a reminder that the humanitarian repercussions of economic warfare are not theoretical. Whatever one may believe about the wisdom of that strategy, it is disingenuous to pretend that its humanitarian consequences are only hypothetical.

There is another cost, however, that also needs to be considered.

For decades, the Cuban regime has deserved overwhelming blame for the country’s economic failures. Central planning, political repression, corruption and chronic mismanagement have devastated the island’s economy long before today’s escalation. The Cuban people are right to hold the regime accountable for these failures.

Yet the more extreme America’s economic pressure becomes, the easier it is for the Cuban government to make the case that public frustration should be redirected towards Washington. A regime that should be forced to answer for its own failures now gains an easy scapegoat. The United States risks becoming identified as a principal cause of the hardships ordinary Cubans experience every day.

That is directly counterproductive to reducing the limited threat Cuba poses to the U.S.

An effective sanctions policy should reinforce accountability for the behavior it seeks to change. It should isolate those responsible for threatening American interests while minimizing unnecessary harm to those who are not. It should weaken an authoritarian government, not notably strengthen its domestic political narrative.

None of this requires a total abandonment of sanctions or acting as though Cuba poses no security concerns. Quite the opposite.

The United States should continue targeting senior regime officials, intelligence services, military entities and organizations directly supporting activities that threaten American interests. It should continue using tailored economic pressure where that pressure is connected to a legitimate security objective, and where it has minimal fallout on the civilian population.

But there is a difference between tailored pressure and complete overkill, and that line has been crossed to a degree that is unjustifiable.

The mere existence of a national security threat is not an excuse for irresponsible economic warfare. National security policy requires nuance. The greater the humanitarian and political risks a policy creates, the stronger the justification for accepting those risks must be.

Cuba may pose a limited threat to the United States, but it is not one that could reasonably justify a maximum-pressure campaign. Washington can confront the dangers Havana actually poses without disproportionately harming innocent civilians.

Responsible statecraft is not measured only by how much pressure America can impose. It is measured by whether that pressure is actually justified in relation to the threat it seeks to address.

Brett Erickson is managing principal at Obsidian Risk Advisors and an advisory board member of the Seton Hall School of Diplomacy and International Relations and DePaul University Driehaus College of Business.

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The Guardian

Maximum pressure on Cuba has become strategic overkill

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