Yesterday, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution urging the United States to drop its long-standing embargo against Cuba…for the 17th year in a row. In what an L.A. Times editorial termed one of “New York’s rites of autumn,” the lopsided vote — 185 countries voted in favor, three opposed, and two abstained — demonstrated the international consensus that U.S. policy toward the communist Caribbean island only grows more archaic by the year.
One need not agree with the GA president’s rather silly statement that Cuba is “a champion of the values that the world needs for the survival of the human species” to concur that sustaining an embargo that only harms the Cuban people and does not even let Americans travel to the country makes little to no policy sense. Here‘s the New America Foundation’s Steve Clemons on how easy it would be for the next president to improve the U.S. relationship with Cuba:
If this year’s vote is any indication, the United States is not getting any more support for its outdated embargo as the years go by. One more country than last year voted for the resolution, and the Marshall Islands flipped to the “abstained” column — leaving only Israel, Palau, and the United States sticking with this Cold War relic.
(cross-posted at On Day One)