As I type this, President Obama is filling everybody’s TV screens with Important Foreign Policy News. Apparently, after negotiating a prisoner release/swap with Havana, Obama is prepared to announce that the U.S. is taking steps toward normalizing relations with Cuba, putting us on a path to ending an embargo that took effect over 54 years ago. The details are like so: the U.S. will ease travel and financial restrictions on Cuba, review Cuba’s presence on the “state sponsors of terrorism” list, and eventually put a U.S. embassy back in Havana, and in return the Cuban government will release some of its political prisoners, increase public internet access, and allow the United Nations and Red Cross back into the country. All of this will eventually accrue to the benefit of a handful of large U.S. and multinational corporations and to the detriment of the Cuban people, you can be fairly sure of that.
I know as much about Cuba as the next guy, which means not enough to try to bamboozle you with some kind of Deep Thought about this potentially massive policy shift. But I will note that this seems to be another sign that the Obama Administration, to its credit, actually gets that economic sanctions are a tool to achieve a larger aim, not an end in themselves. If you see an opening to trade those sanctions for concrete steps toward achieving whatever your aim is, you do it. This is obvious to everybody except the interest groups whose livelihoods depend on keeping sanctions in place, and the Members of Congress whose allegiances have been bought by those interest groups. It’s not a coincidence that many of the same cast of characters who are pushing stronger sanctions on Iran regardless of their impact on the nuclear talks are also griping about today’s Cuba announcement. You know, because the embargo that’s failed to topple Cuba’s Communist government for the past 54 years will topple them one of these days, if we just give it more time. I’m not saying that Bob Menendez and Marco Rubio simply don’t get it; I’m saying that they’re being well-compensated for deliberately not getting it.
The Foreign Exchanges Companion 
“All of this will eventually accrue to the benefit of a handful of large U.S. and multinational corporations and to the detriment of the Cuban people, you can be fairly sure of that.”
I see we have the same friends.