The more than 60-year-old U.S. embargo against Cuba is the longest and most comprehensive set of sanctions in American history—and perhaps the most counterproductive.
For sanctions to have the desired effect of changing the behavior of a government, they must possess four qualities: They must be narrowly targeted on a clear aim. They must be short in duration so that targeted governments can reasonably expect their removal when behavior changes. They must be supported by other countries. And they must be aimed at punishing offending governments and their officials while not inflicting (too much) collateral damage on a country’s people. All four of these qualities are missing in the case of the U.S. embargo against Cuba.
At present, the U.S. embargo is not a single, narrowly targeted policy but a complex compendium of policies controlling everything from trade and travel to financing. They’ve been enacted by many different U.S. administrations for different reasons. Little wonder they’ve not been effective.