The Embargo is out of date and lifting it has international support but the U.S.

refuses to remove its embargo on Cuba. Birns, Director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, and Mills, Senior Fellow at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, 1-30 (Larry and Frederick, Council on Hemispheric Affairs, Best Time for U.S. Cuba Rapprochement is Now, http://www.coha.org/best-time-for-u-s-cubarapprochement-is-now/, 6/23/13, ND)
U.S. policy towards Havana is also anachronistic. During the excesses of the cold war, the U.S. sought to use harsh and unforgiving measures to isolate Cuba from its neighbors in order to limit the influence of the Cuban revolution on a variety of insurgencies being waged in the region. That narrative did not sufficiently recognize the homegrown causes of insurgency in the hemisphere. Some argue that it inadvertently drove Cuba further into the Soviet camp. Ironically, at the present juncture of world history, the embargo is in some ways isolating the U.S. rather than Cuba. Washington is often viewed as implementing a regional policy that is defenseless and without a compass. At the last Summit of the Americas in Cartagena in April 2012, member states, with the exception of Washington, made it clear that they unanimously want Cuba to participate in the next plenary meeting or the gathering will be shut down. There are new regional organizations,
In addition to being counter-productive and immoral, such as the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), that now include Cuba and exclude the U.S. Not even Americas closest allies support the embargo. Instead, over the years, leaders in NATO and the OECD member nations have visited Cuba and, in some cases, allocated lines of credit to the regime. So it was no surprise that in

November of 2012, the United Nations General Assembly voted overwhelmingly (188 3), for the 21st year in a row, against the US embargo. Finally, while a slim majority of Cuban Americans still favor the measure, changing demographics are eroding and outdating this support. As famed Cuban
Researcher, Wayne Smith, the director of the Latin America Rights & Security: Cuba Project, at the Center for International Policy, points out, There

are now many more new young Cuban Americans who support a more sensible approach to Cuba (Washington Post, Nov. 9, 2012).

Now is key there is a window of opportunity to open up relations Pomerantz, PHD from Tufts University, 2013 [Phyllis R., 1-1-2013, The Globe and Mail, Nows the Time to Lift the U.S. Embargo on Cuba, http://www.theglobeandmail.com/commentary/nows-the-time-to-lift-the-usembargo-on-cuba/article6790494/ EJH]
. No, the real reason is because of a small vocal minority (Cuban-American exiles and their families)
who happen to be clustered in an electoral swing state (Florida) that gives them political clout. Some say the attitudes of the younger generation are softening toward Cuba. Does Washington really need

to wait another generation or two? The U.S. stand on Cuba is incomprehensible and only serves to look hypocritical and arbitrary in the eyes of a world that doesnt understand the intricacies of American politics. Now that the election is over, there is a window of opportunity to open up a full commercial and diplomatic relationship. Mr. Obama should use the full extent of his executive powers to immediately relax restrictions, and Congress should pass legislation lifting the remaining legal obstacles. Its time to forget about old grudges and remember that the best way to convert an enemy into a friend is to embrace him. Instead of admiring Havanas old cars, Americans should be selling them new ones.

The end to the embargo is inevitably coming anyways, the aff just speeds it up Marquez, Writer for the Orlando Sentinel, 02

(Myriam April 2002, The Orlando Sentinel, End to embargo of Cuba is inevitable http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2002-0417/news/0204160441_1_castro-regime-embargo-cuban-regime MG) An end to the embargo is inevitable, if not all of it then most of it. Congress already has been trying to chip

away at its effects, trying to lift the travel ban, pushing for more sales of food and grains to Havana. I can list all
the moral reasons we should uphold the embargo against a regime that quashes the human spirit, but I also can list all the practical reasons the embargo has been a convenient weapon for Castro to use to build up nationalistic pride. I'm not talking about the regime's billboards. The irony isn't lost on visitors who see a decaying building with a billboard in front of it stating: Revolution means construction!

Obama is gradually taking key parts of the embargo out, inevitably it is all going to disappear MacAskill, staff member of the guardian, 11
(Ewen 1/15/11 the guardian, Barack Obama acts to ease US embargo on Cuba http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/15/barack-obama-us-embargo-cuba MG)

Barack Obama has eased America's long-standing embargo on Cuba, allowing many Americans to travel there for
the first time and increasing the amounts that they can invest in the island. Other changes announced by the president will allow all US international airports to accept flights to and from Cuba; at present, chartered flights are restricted to Miami and a handful of other airports. The moves represent an important step to rapprochement between the US and Cuba. Almost as soon as Fidel Castro's movement took power in the 1959 revolution, the US began an embargo that it has maintained ever since. Relations, though still tentative, have improved since Castro gave up the leadership in favour of his brother Raul, the accession

of Obama to the presidency, and the release of some political prisoners in Cuba. The move will help
Obama's standing with the American left. In a lengthy press release yesterday evening, the White House said: "President Obama has directed the secretaries of state, treasury and homeland security to take a series of steps to continue efforts to reach out to the Cuban people in support of their desire to freely determine their country's future." It added: "The president has directed that changes be made to regulations and policies governing: purposeful travel; non-family remittances; and US airports supporting licensed charter flights to and from Cuba. These measures will increase people-to-people contact; support civil society in Cuba; enhance the free flow of information to, from, and among the Cuban people; and help promote their independence from Cuban authorities." The changes

reverse stricter measures imposed by George Bush, who courted the anti-Castro Cuban-Amerian vote in Florida in 2000 and again in 2004, and come on top of those Obama made in 2009 that helped reunite divided Cuban families, improved communication between the countries and helped humanitarian aid to the island. Obama's move is made by presidential order and cannot be blocked by Congress. But only Congress can lift the embargo. Such was the strength of the Cuban-American anti-Castro vote
in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s that there was little serious challenge to it. But a younger generation of Cuban-Americans is less fixated by Castro and his espousal of communism during the cold war. Most Americans are in effect banned from Cuba because it is an offence to spend money on the island. Under the changes, students and academic staff, religious groups and

others will be free to visit, and educational exchanges are to be promoted. Americans will be allowed to send up to $500 to support private economic and other activities, though not any involving the Cuban Communist party or its members. On airports, the White House said: "To better serve those who seek to visit
family in Cuba and engage in other licensed purposeful travel, the president has directed that regulations governing the eligibility of US airports to serve as points of embarkation and return for licensed flights to Cuba be modified." All US international airports can apply to service flights to and from Cuba.

THUS The PLAN: The United States federal government should repeal the entire embargo against Cuba

**Adv--- Biotech**
Bio-Tech is Booming in Cuba High Output and Development Rates Evenson, JSD, 2007 (Debra, Fall, Cuba's Biotechnology Revolution, MEDICC Review, Volume: 9 No.1, MK)
As a result of accelerated training of scientists and engineers beginning in the 1960s and substantial state investment since the 1980s calculated at about USD$1 billion,[1] Cuban biotechnology has become a major player in the Cuban economy and successfully established its place in the global market. According to a World Bank report, Cuba has the capacity to meet about 80% of its domestic demand for prescription drugs and had achieved annual biotech exports of around USD$100 million in the 1990s.[2] A recent Ernst & Young report puts exports of biotech products at USD$300 million in 2005.[3] Behind the commercial success of Cubas biotech industry are several innovative vaccines, including the recombinant hepatitis B vaccine, which received pre-qualification from the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2001 for international use and is now sold in more than 30 countries worldwide. Cuba also developed the worlds first effective vaccine against meningitis B, VAMENGOC-BC , which is now exported primarily to Latin America, including Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Venezuela, and Uruguay. Based on this successful experience, in 1999, the British company Glaxo-Smith-Kline entered into a licensing agreement with Cubas Finlay Institute to develop a meningococcal B vaccine using Cuban technology, to be distributed in Europe and North America. International acceptance of Cuban biotech is growing, with products now registered in more than 55 countries, principally in the Global South. A deep project pipeline, including innovative therapeutic cancer vaccines currently in clinical trials in Cuba, Canada, and elsewhere mean the countrys market share is likely to keep growing. By 2004, Cuba had registered some 100 patents and applied for another 500 patents throughout the world.[4] Cubas safety and research standards are reported to *be+ equal or even exceed those of the US Federal Drug Administration and the European Union.*5+

Cuban biotech is high now their sector is booming NTI, World Relations Institute, 2013 (2/13, NTI, Cuba: Biological, http://www.nti.org/country-profiles/cuba/biological/, 6/27/13, MK)
Cuban scientists pursue many research interests as they attempt to address the technological needs and desires of those both within and outside of Cuba. In the past two decades, Cuba has successfully developed a meningitis B vaccine, hepatitis B vaccine,[13] cattle tick "vaccine," and monoclonal antibodies for kidney transplants. Cuba has also developed products through CIGB including vaccines for pneumonia, diphtheria, anemia, and various other diseases.[14] Scientific institutions also have conducted trials involving epidermal growth factor; cancer, AIDS, and hepatitis C vaccines; and pestresistant sugar cane. These activities clearly demonstrate Cuba's versatility in biotechnology research and production.[15] As of February 2009, CIGB is "currently working on 20 new projects that include the

development of 40 products to treat several diseases." [16] As the Cuban biotechnology industry has expanded over the past decade, the nation has become a major source of both medicine and scientific technology to the developing world. Cuba currently has technology trade agreements with at least 14 countries, with negotiations for trade underway with several other states. In the past decade, Iran, China, India, Algeria, Brazil, and Venezuela have become the main recipients of Cuban technology.[17] Cuba has also helped to initiate joint biotechnology enterprises within developing countries, specifically Iran, China, and India, transferring technology from several different scientific institutions, including the CIGB and the Center for Molecular Immunology.[18] Cuba has attempted to repay parts of its debt to Brazil, Columbia, and Venezuela by exporting pharmaceutical products to these countries.

Cuban Biotech Thriving Embargo Prevents It From Reaching U.S. Randal, Health Policy Writer, 2000 (Judith, 2000, Despite Embargo, Biotechnology in Cuba Thrives, Oxford Journals, Volume 92, Issue 13, p.1034-1037, MK)
Among those accomplishments is an extensive array of recombinant proteins, synthetic peptides, monoclonal antibodies (MAbs) and antigens that have enabled their country to routinely screen its blood and blood products for AIDS and viral hepatitis, its pregnant women for neural tube defects in the fetus, and its newborns for certain biochemical birth defects. On the list of home-grown recombinants, too,
are interleukin-2 (for cancer treatment), alpha and gamma interferon, streptokinase, erythropoietin, and several livestock and human vaccines, including a hepatitis B vaccine that has virtually eliminated the disease in Cuba. Also in the Cuban biotech pipeline, although strictly investigational to date, are recombinant vaccines against AIDS, hepatitis C, and dengue fever. (Dengue, common in much of the tropics, is a debilitating mosquito-borne illness for which there is only supportive treatment. Dengue fever can be life-threatening and even fatal.) And while Cuba has yet to clone animals, Havanas Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (Spanish acronym CIGB) is proud of the tilapia (an edible freshwater fish) that it has fitted with extra growth hormone genes. Indeed, the CIGBs Jorge Gavilondo, Ph.D., and his colleagues there envision a day when transgenic plants, or more specifically, their seeds, will be the repositories of key antibodies and are working toward making that a reality. Clinical Research Moreover, to talk with Pedro Lopez Saura, M.D., Ph.D., is to learn how clinical research is done in Cuba. As vice-director for regulatory issues and clinical trials at CIGB, he speaks knowledgeably of such matters as hospital institutional review boards, peer review, informed consent for patients participating in trials, and other regulatory hoops that candidate therapies must jump through in his country just as they do in larger countries with a modern research enterprise. And when multicenter trials are called for, Cuba has a coordinating center that sets them up and manages them. Its the equivalent of a CRO (contract research organization) in the United States, Lopez Saura explained. Meanwhile, together with seeking touristsmainly from Canada and EuropeCuba has been turning to biotechnology to earn foreign exchange. A part of its R&D effort, for example, is to develop generic versions of prescription drugs that can be sold to niche marketsprincipally poor countriesas soon as the patents on them expire. (Cuba, unlike China, honors foreign patents and has its own Office for Intellectual Property.) The government plows the profits from this and other overseas sales of its biotechnology back into the R&D centers. But by no means can every product of Cuban R&D be called me -too, as a vaccine from the Finlay Institute in Havana illustrates. It is the worlds only type B bacteriali.e., meningococcalmeningitis vaccine, and since its introduction in 1989 (originally for domestic use), it has earned Cuba about US $40 million from sales to other countries, principally Brazil. Last year, this vaccine was licensed to SmithKline Beecham, which means that it may eventually also be available in the United States. The license, however, required special dispensations from the U.S. government, which are hard to get. At one point, for example, Merck & Co. officials met with President Fidel Castro to discuss AIDS research collaborations with Cuban scientists but dropped the idea when they found too many U.S. legal complications in the way. The effect of U.S. sanctions on Cuban biotechnology, in fact, can be more than bilateral. The countrys inability to buy directly from U.S. suppliers, for example, has driven some of its investigators to spend time in the better-equipped labs of European colleagues or to collaborate with them from afar, creating considerable sympathy for the Cubans plight in the process. Another example is the Center for Molecular Immunology (Spanish acronym CIM), a part of Havanas Western Scientific Pole and York Medical Inc. of Mississauga, Ontario, its joint venture partner. The center specializes in oncology and is headed by Augustin Lage, M.D., Ph.D., whose brother Carlos Lage is President Castros finance minister. CIM has in its R&D

portfolio (among other things): MAbssome radioactively labeledthat target one type of cancer or another for purposes of diagnosis or therapy; and a doubly recombinant vaccine that has shown promise for controlling advanced non-small cell lung cancer and may be useful for certain other cancers as well. (See story below.) Under York Medicals aegis, the vaccine and three versions of a CIM MAb are in clinical trials in Canada. David Allan, York Medicals chief executive officer, is

upbeat about these productsnot least because Canadian regulatory authorities were sufficiently impressed by their performance in Cuba to issue the approvals that were a prerequisite for the trials. But Allan also worries about the effect of the U.S. embargo on things Cuban no matter their benefits. He fears that no drug firm doing business in the United Statesand that includes multinationals will risk trying to commercialize products that originated in Havana. In sum, for all the prestige that scientists in Cuba enjoy at home, it is difficult for them to find a place in the international sun

Lift Would Bring Advanced Bio-tech and Skilled Workers Encourages International Spread Fineman, Reporter at L.A. Times, 1998 (Mark, 8/14, L.A. Times, Little-known biotech industry vital to Cuba's economic future, 6/24/13, MK)
When Franklin Sotolongo injected himself with the vial of experimental liquid that day in 1985, it was one of the most emotional moments of his life. Sotolongo was leading a small team of Cuban scientists struggling to save their nation from an epidemic of group-B meningitis. Hundreds of children were dying, and there was neither a cure nor a vaccine -- not only on their island, but anywhere. They studied the research of scientists in Europe and the United States, and, after years of testing in monkeys and mice, Sotolongo and his team had what they thought was a breakthrough. ``We tried it on ourselves first,'' he says. ``We were sure there was nothing to worry about, but we felt the first risks should be ours.'' Thirteen years later, group-B meningitis has been virtually wiped out. Cuba and Sotolongo's government institute have the patent on a group-B meningococcal vaccine so effective that international pharmaceutical giant SmithKline Beecham is appealing to Washington to waive its trade embargo of Cuba to permit its own trials of the vaccine. But the vaccine is just one of many unheralded breakthroughs in Cuba's little-known yet highly advanced biotechnology industry -- one that has, with its infusion of foreign exchange, helped the country weather the collapse of its Soviet benefactor. Fast-growing fish Unencumbered by competing interests in a one-party state that views biotech as a key to its medical and economic survival, Cuban scientists have developed an array of new vaccines and drugs that are at the leading edge of biotech research. One team is hard at work in the first phase of human clinical trials of a potential AIDS vaccine that scientists hope will be ready for commercial use in two years. Another is perfecting what would be the world's first effective vaccine against cholera -- a disease that doesn't even exist in Cuba. Other scientists have used human placenta to develop a cream that effectively reverses the effects of certain skin diseases. And still another has successfully cloned a new species of fish that grows twice as fast as the natural variety. That ``transgenetic'' fish, whose growth genes have been modified by Cuban scientists will be Cuba's centerpiece at a five-day international conference it is sponsoring in Havana in November. But Cuba's multimillion-dollar biotechnology industry is not just for show or its own medical needs. Already, the Cuban government successfully has marketed its group-B meningococcal vaccine in Argentina, Brazil and Colombia, where sales have helped Cuba repay its debts to those countries. $290 million in sales Heber Biotech S.A., a semi-private company created by the Cuban government in 1991 to market its high-tech pharmaceuticals, is now selling products in 34 countries. Among them: an indigenously developed interferon, a hepatitis B vaccine and an advanced streptokinase drug that destroys coronary clots. With annual sales as high as $290 million a year, Heber, Sotolongo's Finlay Institute and other centers in Cuba's biotech industry now rank behind only tourism, nickel production and tobacco as the country's

largest export earner. And it is poised for even bigger growth in the years ahead. The Finlay Institute's high-tech Plant No. 3 is the cornerstone of that expansion effort. Packed with more than $100 million in state-of-the-art imported equipment, the factory has the capacity to produce 100 million doses of vaccines every year -- more than double what it has marketed in the past. And the institute has prepared slick brochures and marketing campaigns to advertise its potential worldwide. The Biotechnology Havana '98 Transgenesis conference scheduled to open Nov. 16 is subtitled ``From the Laboratory to the Market,'' and it will include commercial endeavors once unthinkable in this Communist state; exhibit space already is renting for $50 per square foot. Medicines scarce And Heber Biotech, marketing itself under the slogan ``Approaching Horizons,'' now has offices or direct business relations in more than 50 countries, and it boasts that its sales increased more than six-fold between 1992 and '96. Through most of its 30-year history, Cuba's biotechnology research industry focused almost entirely on preventing and curing diseases at home -- an island nation where medicines were scarce, largely because of the United States' punishing trade embargo. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, however, Cuba lost billions of dollars that kept its socialist economy afloat. The government was forced to inventory its state industries for potential exports to raise the money it needed to continue subsidizing food and providing free education and health care. Its biotechnology industry emerged near the top of the list. In recent years, the government has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in biotech facilities and research. That has created something of a technology gap here: scientists using advanced genetic techniques to clone fish in a land where the U.S. embargo has made antibiotics scarce on hospital shelves and smoke-belching, '50s-vintage Chevys and Buicks commonplace on the streets.

Embargo Lift Equals Better Biotech Leads to Legal Imports CPAG, Center for National Policy, 2003 (U.S. Cuba Relations, Time for a New Approach, pg. 12)
While internal failings and external pressures have kept Cubas economic system from reaching even a fraction of its potential, the country does offer opportunities for U.S. exports and investment. Since November 2001, Cuba has purchased $125 million in food from U.S. producers and recently signed contracts for an additional $95 million. Total food imports are currently estimated at $1 billion per year. As Cuba moves inevitablyalbeit slowly and fitfullytoward a more market-based economy, the size of that market is likely to increase. Cuba also exports a number of products that are otherwise unavailable in the U.S. market or whose substitutes are lower in quality. Cubas biotechnology industry, for example, has developed effective meningitis and hepatitis vaccines to which Americans have no legal access, while some of Cubas more traditional exports, which have always enjoyed a reputation for superior quality, also cannot legally be imported. Current policy excludes U.S. businesses and individuals from virtually all export and investment opportunities and gives other countries a head start in positioning themselves to take advantage of future ones. It prevents U.S. consumers from purchasing products from Cuba. And it does not provide an effective mechanism for the resolution of intellectual property disputes or expropriated property claims.

Impact Disease

Climate Change makes diseases go global Hasham 11 (Alyshah, 1/25/13, International News Services, Climate Change spreads Infectious Diseases Worldwide, http://www.internationalnewsservices.com/articles/1latest-news/17833-climate-change-spreads-infectious-diseases-worldwide, accessed 6/30/13, WP)
As negotiators at the recent United Nations climate change conference in Cancun wrapped up their work, one problem concentrating minds enough to secure a partial deal was the spread of disease on the coat-tails of global warming. Infectious diseases are spreading to regions where they were previously absent, driven by warmer temperatures and changing rainfall patterns. Europe and North America have been seeing an increase in cases of West Nile disease, which as the name suggests thrives in tropical and sub-tropical regions. Warmer temperatures are allowing the mosquitoes that carry the disease to roam further north. Its a similar story for diseases such as dengue fever or tick-borne encephalitis (which causes brain inflammation). The UK is by no means an exception to this trend. A recent study from the University of Plymouth concluded that the most dangerous climate-change linked threat to Britain's environmental health could be vector borne diseases (such as Leishmaniasis - carried by the sand fly) which could spread to new areas because of warming temperatures. It concluded: "Environmental change could in turn lead to changes in the epidemiology of communicable disease within the UK. And there is also the potential for disease being caused by extreme weather conditions, potentially associated with climate change, such as the 2004 flooding in Boscastle,
Cornwall, which caused an outbreak of Ecoli 0157. Worldwide, in 2008 the World Conservation Society identified a Deadly Dozen, 12 animalborne diseases that may more likely to spread due to climate change. The list includes bird flu, tuberculosis, Ebola, cholera, babesiosis, parasites, Lyme disease, plague, Rift Valley fever, sleeping sickness, yellow fever and red tides (algal blooms).It is

well established

that climate change is a fundamental factor in the spread of infectious diseases, said Dr Richard Ostfeld, a
disease ecologist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, in New York. The classic example is malaria moving upslope in the East African highlands, in Zimbabwe and Mozambique with the warmer temperatures. Another is dengue, a disease also transmitted by mosquitoes that has been increasing in severity in urban areas in developing countries. If all other factors (such as migration and population) remain constant, the World Health Organisation predicts that an additional 2 billion people could be exposed to dengue (also called break-bone fever) by the 2080s. Ostfeld says the case is often made that clean buildings and sanitation will cancel out the effects of climate change on the spread of diseases an argument he does not agree withIt is misleading to be too sanguine about our infrastructure being able to protect us against diseases, said Ostfeld. Speaking to Environmental Health News, he cited a West Nile disease outbreak in California during the bursting of the housing bubble to make his point. Mosquitoes began breeding in the slimy green soup in abandoned swimming pools of foreclosed homes. And the H1N1 pandemic is still fresh in the public memory. However,

establishing a relationship between disease and environmental factors is a far step from associating those environmental factors with climate change. The cholera epidemic in Haiti is probably related to a rise in temperatures and salinity in the delta where the epidemic began, said Dr David Sack of the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University, Maryland, USA.
But determining the role of climate change is another story. In an article in the New England Journal of Medicine, Dr Emily Shuman agrees

that climate has a strong impact on vector-borne and water-borne diseases. Droughts, for example, often cause West Nile disease epidemics because the birds and mosquitoes carrying the disease are driven to scarce water sources, enhancing transmission. The drought also kills off natural predators of mosquitoes.
Madeleine Thomson, a senior research scientist at the International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI), also in New York, said the challenge lies in determining whether climate change plays a role in this drought, and what other factors were involved. The focus of climate change and disease tend to be transmission, she added. It

is important to think about how climate change impacts the poor in developing countries, who are relying on rain-fed agriculture for food and income. Climate change also leads to poverty and food insecurity. Both are major drivers in ill health, which increases susceptibility to infectious diseases. Already inadequate health services in many developing nations will be hard pressed to accommodate an increase in diseases, not to mention the problems that new and unfamiliar diseases will pose. Other studies warn of the possibility of new types of mosquitoes that may be more effective at
spreading the disease. Another challenge is the lack of data. There is often not enough long-term disease data. Climate change is measured through mathematical modeling, and may not always be used correctly by scientists studying disease. However, the gap between epidemiologists and meteorologists is closing, with an increase in combined research said Thomson.

A global disease will not just threaten the health of the individual it will unchecked lead to extreme negative effects on the global economy, undermine social order, catalyze regional instability, and pose the threat of bioterrorism.
Brower 03 (Jennifer, September 2003, The RAND institute, http://www.fas.org/irp/threat/nie99-17d.htm, accessed 6/30/13, WP)
The increasing transnational threat of infectious disease deserves special attention within this context of the evolving definition of security in the postCold War era. State centric models of security are ineffective at coping with issues, such as the spread of diseases that originate within sovereign borders, but have effects that are felt regionally and globally. Human security reflects the new challenges facing society
in the 21st century. In this model, the primary object of security is the individual, not the state. As a result, an individuals security depends not only on the integrity of the state but also on the quality of that individuals life. Infectious disease clearly represents a threat to human security in that it has the potential to affect both the person and his or her ability to pursue life, liberty, and happiness.

In addition to threatening the health of an individual, the spread of disease can weaken public confidence in governments ability to respond, have an adverse economic impact, undermine a states social order, catalyze regional instability, and pose a strategic threat through bioterrorism and/or biowarfare. While
infectious diseases are widely discussed, few treatises have addressed the security implications of emerging and reemerging ill- nesses. This report provides a more comprehensive analysis than has been done to date, encompassing both disease and security. It comes at a critical juncture, as the magnitude and nature of the threat is growing because of the emergence of new illnesses such as Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS), Ebola, and hepatitis C; the increasing inability of modern medicine to respond to resistant and emerging pathogens; and the growing threat of bioterrorism and biowarfare. In addition, human

actions amplify these trends by putting us in evergreater contact with deadly microbes. Globalization, modern medical practices, urbanization, climatic change, and changing social and behavioral patterns all serve to increase the chance that individuals will come in contact with diseases, which they may not be able to survive. The AIDS crisis in South Africa provides a disturbing example of how a pathogen can affect security at all levels, from individual to regional and even to global. Approximately one-quarter of the adult population in South Africa is Human
Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) positive, with the disproportionate burden of illness traditionally falling on the most economically and personally productive segment of society. The true impact of the AIDS epidemic is yet to be felt. Deaths from full-blown AIDS are not projected to peak until the period between 2009 and 2012, and the number of HIV infections is still increasing. The disease

is responsible for undermining social and economic stability, weakening military preparedness, contributing to increases in crime and the lack of a capability to respond to it, and weakening regional stability. Specific
effects include creating more than two million orphans, removing about US$22 billion from South Africas economy, and limiting South Africas ability to participate in inter- national peacekeeping missions. Many causes played a role in the development of the crisis, including promiscuous heterosexual sex, the low status of women, prostitution, sexual abuse and violence, a popular attitude that dismisses risk, as well as the failure to acknowledge the magnitude of the problem in the early and middle stages of the epidemic. The South African government has made a relatively small effort to curb the epidemic, in part due to President Thabo Mbekis public questioning of the link between HIV and AIDS, and this has had devastating results. This example serves as a lesson to other countries; if unaddressed, infectious disease can negatively and overwhelmingly affect a states functions and security. Currently the United States is managing the infectious disease threat; however, there are many indications that,

if left unchecked, pathogens could present a serious threat to the smooth functioning of the country. Many of the global factors that serve to increase the threat from pathogenic microbes are particularly relevant for the United States. These include globalization, modern medical practices, urbanization, global climatic change, and changing social and behavioral patterns. Deaths from infectious illnesses average approximately 170,000 per year, but the scope of the situation is much larger when
stigmatization, productivity losses, and other psychological and economic costs are taken into account. In addition, the ability of pathogens to mutate and to spread into previously unknown habitats means that the toll could increase significantly. In the second half of the 20th century almost 30 new human diseases were identified, and antibiotic and drug resistance grew at an alarming rate. This trend applies equally to animal diseases. As

citizens continue to travel, import food and goods globally, engage in promiscuous sex, use illegal intravenous drugs, encroach on new habitats, and utilize donated blood, their chances of coming in con- tact with new or more virulent organisms increases. The added threat of bioterrorism intensifies the
risk of encountering a life- threatening microbe.virus, Lassa virus, Yersinia pestis, Francisella tularensis, and Bacillus anthracis.

The pandemic is coming vaccinations are the way to prepare ourselves to ensure that the next one isnt the big one. Quammen 12 (David, 9/22/12, The New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/23/opinion/sunday/anticipating-the-nextpandemic.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0, accessed 6/30/13, WP)
BAD news is always interesting, especially when it starts small and threatens to grow large, like the little cloud on the distant horizon, no bigger than a mans hand, that is destined to rise as a thunderhead (1 Kings 18:44). Thats why we read so avidly about the recent outbreaks of Ebola virus disease among villages in Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, and about West Nile fever in the area
around Dallas (where 15 have died of it since July). And thats why, early this month, heads turned toward Yosemite National Park after the announcement of a third death from hantavirus pulmonary syndrome among recent visitors there. Humans

die in large numbers every day, every hour, from heart failure and automobile crashes and the dreary effects of poverty; but strange new infectious diseases, even when the death tolls are low, call up a more urgent sort of attention. Why? Theres a tangle of reasons, no doubt, but one is obvious: whenever an outbreak occurs, we all ask ourselves whether it might herald the Next Big One. What I mean by the Next Big One is a pandemic of some newly emerging or re-emerging infectious disease, a global health catastrophe in which millions die. The influenza epidemic of 1918-19 was a big one, killing about 50 million people worldwide. The Hong Kong flu of 1968-69 was biggish, causing at least a million deaths. AIDS has killed some 30 million and counting .
Scientists who study this subject virologists, molecular geneticists, epidemiologists, disease ecologists stress its complexity but tend to agree on a few points. Yes,

there probably will be a Next Big One, they say. It will most likely be caused by a virus, not by a bacterium or some other kind of bug. More specifically, we should expect an RNA virus (specifically, one that bears its genome
as a single molecular strand), as distinct from a DNA virus (carrying its info on the reliable double helix, less prone to mutation, therefore less variable and adaptable). Finally, this RNA virus will almost certainly be zoonotic a pathogen that emerges from some nonhuman animal to infect, and spread among, human beings. The influenzas are zoonoses. They emerge from wild aquatic birds, sometimes with a pig as an intermediary host on the way to humanity. AIDS is a zoonosis; the pandemic strain of H.I.V. emerged about a century ago from a single Cameroonian chimpanzee. Ebola is a zoonosis. The Ebola viruses (there are five known species) abide inconspicuously in some as yet unidentified creature or creatures native to Central African forests, spilling over occasionally to kill gorillas and chimps and people. SARS is a zoonosis that emerged from a Chinese bat, fanned out of Hong Kong to the wider world, threatened to be the Next Big One, and then was stopped barely by fast and excellent medical science. And the hantaviruses, of which there are many known species (Andes virus, Black Creek Canal virus, Muleshoe virus, Seoul virus, Puumala virus and dozens more), come out of rodents. The species of hantavirus at large in Yosemite is called Sin Nombre nameless virus, and is the same one that erupted famously, and lethally, at the Four Corners in 1993. Its primary host is the deer mouse, one of the most widely distributed and abundant vertebrates in North America. The virus makes its way from dried mouse urine or feces into airborne dust, and from airborne dust into human lungs. If that happens to you, youre in trouble. Theres no treatment, and the fatality rate for hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, the infection in severe form, runs at about 40 percent. You dont have to go to Yosemite and sleep in a dusty cabin to put yourself close to a hantavirus. Although one expert, recently quoted by Scientific American, called it a very rare kind of virus, that view doesnt square with the studies Ive read or the testimony of hantavirus researchers Ive interviewed. The virus seems to be relatively common, at least among deer mice. A 2008 study done at Tuolumne Meadows in Yosemite found that 24 percent of local deer mice had the antibody for the virus, signaling a past or current infection. One mouse in four is worryingly high. Among these mouse populations nationwide, the prevalence of the antibody seems to vary from as low as zero to as high as 49 percent, or one in two mice. The question this raises is: Why arent more people dying from Sin Nombre virus? The answer seems to be that, although very dangerous when caught, its not easy to catch, despite its presence in mouse-infested sheds and trailers and garages and barns across much of America. This is because it doesnt pass from person to person only from mouse to mouse, and from mouse excretions to one unlucky person or another, each of whom represents a dead-end host. (The dead of that dead-end may be figurative or literal.) Its not a very rare virus; its a common virus known only rarely to infect humans, and with no ramifying chains of human contagion. So the Next B ig One is not likely to be Sin Nombre. Nor is it likely to be Ebola, which is transmissible from human to human through direct contact with bodily fluids, but can be stopped by preventing such contact. Furthermore, Ebola burns so hotly in its victims, incapacitating and killing so quickly, that it is poorly adapted to achieve global dispersal. Only one human has ever been known to leave Africa with a rampant Ebola virus infection and that was a Swiss woman, evacuated in 1994 to a hospital in Basel. If you want to be grateful for something today, be grateful for that: Ebola doesnt fly. WE should recognize such blessings, and try to focus our deepest concerns on real global dangers. Too often, were distracted from good scientific information by yellow journalism and the frisson of melodrama. Ebola is charismatic, the demon that people love to fear. Other lurid candidates, like hantavirus and SARS, also get their share of headlines. When you mention emerging diseases, peoples respons es tend to fall at the two ends of a spectrum. Some folks are mesmerized by the dark possibilities and the garish but unrepresentative cases. Others are dismissive, rolling their eyes at the prospect of having to contemplate still another category of dire monition. They want you to cut to the chase. Are we all gonna die? they ask. Or they say: Fine, so what can we do about these bugs? Yes,

we are all going to die, though most of us not from a strange disease newly emerged from a mouse or a chimp. And there are things we can do: get a flu vaccination; support calls for research; avoid coughing people on airplanes; apply

mosquito repellent; wear a mask when you sweep out your old shed; dont eat any chimpanzee meat from an animal found dead in the forest

Disease lead to extinction

Yu, Dartmouth Undergrad, 9
(Victoria, Undergraduate at Dartmouth, University publication, Human Extinction: The Uncertainty of Our Fate, Dartmouth Undergraduate Journal of Science, 22 May 2009, 6-31-13)

A pandemic will kill off all humans. In the past, humans have indeed fallen victim to viruses. Perhaps the best-known case was the bubonic plague that killed up to one third of the European population in the mid-14th century (7). While vaccines have been developed for the plague and some other infectious diseases, new viral strains are constantly emerging a process that maintains the possibility of a pandemic-facilitated human extinction. Some surveyed students mentioned AIDS as a potential pandemic-causing virus. It is true that scientists have been unable thus far to find a sustainable cure for AIDS, mainly due to HIVs rapid and constant evolution. Specifically, two factors account for the viruss abnormally high mutation rate: 1. HIVs use of reverse transcriptase, which does not have a proof-reading mechanism, and 2. the lack of an error-correction mechanism in HIV DNA polymerase (8). Luckily, though, there are certain characteristics of HIV that make it a poor candidate for a large-scale global infection: HIV can lie dormant in the human body for years without manifesting itself, and AIDS itself does not kill directly, but rather through the weakening of the immune system. However, for more easily transmitted viruses such as influenza, the evolution of new strains could prove far more consequential. The simultaneous occurrence of antigenic drift (point mutations that lead to new strains) and antigenic shift (the inter-species transfer of disease) in the influenza virus could produce a new version of influenza for which scientists may not immediately find a cure. Since influenza can spread quickly, this lag time could potentially lead to a global influenza pandemic , according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (9). The most recent scare of this variety came in 1918 when bird flu managed to kill over 50 million people around the world in what is sometimes referred to as the Spanish flu pandemic. Perhaps even more frightening is the fact that only 25 mutations were required to convert the original viral strain which could only infect birds into a human-viable strain (10).

ImpactBioterror
Solves bioterror Bailey, Science Correspond for Reason Magazine, 1 [Ronald, award-winning science correspondent for Reason
magazine and Reason.com, where he writes a weekly science and technology column. Bailey is the author of the book Liberation Biology: The Moral and Scientific Case for the Biotech Revolution (Prometheus, 2005), and his work was featured in The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2004. In 2006, Bailey was shortlisted by the editors of Nature Biotechnology as one of the personalities who have made the "most significant contributions" to biotechnology in the last 10 years. 11/7/1, The Best Biodefense, Reason, http://reason.com/archives/2001/11/07/the-best-biodefense] But Cipro and other antibiotics are just a small part of the arsenal that could one day soon be deployed in defending America against biowarfare. Just consider

whats in the pipeline now that could be used to protect Americans against infectious diseases, including bioterrorism. A Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Research Association survey found 137 new medicines for infectious diseases in drug company research and development pipelines, including 19
antibiotics and 42 vaccines. With regard to anthrax, instead of having to rush a sample to a lab where it takes hours or even days to culture,

biotech companies have created test strips using antibody technologies that can confirm the presence of anthrax in 15 minutes or less, allowing decontamination and treatment to begin immediately. Similar test strips are being developed for the detection of smallpox as well. The biotech company EluSys Therapeutics is working on an

exciting technique which would "implement instant immunity." EluSys joins two monoclonal antibodies chemically
together so that they act like biological double-sided tape. One antibody sticks to toxins, viruses, or bacteria while the other binds to human red blood cells. The red blood cells carry the pathogen or toxin to the liver for destruction and return unharmed to the normal blood circulation. In one test, the

EluSys treatment reduced the viral load in monkeys one million-fold in less than an hour. The technology could be applied to a number of bioterrorist threats, such as dengue fever, Ebola and Marburg viruses, and plague. Of course, the EluSys treatment would not just be useful for responding to bioterrorist attacks, but also could treat almost any infection or poisoning. Further down the development road are technologies that could rapidly analyze a pathogens DNA, and then guide the rapid synthesis of drugs like the ones being developed by EluSys that can bind, or disable, segments of DNA crucial to an infectious organism's survival. Again, this technology would be a great boon for treating infectious diseases and might be a permanent deterrent to future bioterrorist attacks. Seizing Bayers
patent now wouldnt just cost that company and its stockholders a little bit of money (Bayer sold $1 billion in Cipro last year), but would reverberate throughout the pharmaceutical research and development industry. If governments begin to seize patents on the pretext of addressing alleged public health emergencies, the investment in research that would bring about new and effective treatments could dry up. Investors and pharmaceutical executives couldnt justify putting $30 billion annually into already risky and uncertain research if they couldnt be sure of earning enough profits to pay back their costs. Consider what happened during the Clinton health care fiasco, which threatened to impose price controls on prescription drugs in the early 1990s: Growth in research spending dropped off dramatically from 10 percent annually to about 2 percent per year. A

far more sensible and farsighted way to protect the American public from health threats, including bioterrorism, is to encourage further pharmaceutical research by respecting drug patents. In the final analysis, Americas best biodefense is a vital and profitable pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry.

That solves Extinction Steinbrenner, Brookings Institute Senior Fellow, 97

(John Steinbrenner, Senior Fellow Brookings, Foreign Policy, 12-22-1997, Lexis, 6-31-13)

Although human pathogens are often lumped with nuclear explosives and lethal chemicals as potential weapons of mass destruction, there is an obvious, fundamentally important difference: Pathogens are alive, weapons are not. Nuclear and chemical weapons do not reproduce themselves and do not independently engage in adaptive behavior; pathogens do both of these things. That deceptively simple observation has immense implications. The use of a manufactured weapon is a singular event. Most of the damage occurs immediately. The aftereffects, whatever they may be, decay rapidly over time and distance in a reasonably predictable manner. Even before a nuclear warhead is detonated, for instance, it is possible to estimate the extent of the subsequent damage and the likely level of radioactive fallout. Such predictability is an essential component for tactical military planning. The use of a pathogen, by contrast, is an extended process whose scope and timing cannot be precisely controlled. For most potential biological agents, the predominant drawback is that they would not act swiftly or decisively enough to be an effective weapon. But for a few pathogens - ones most likely to have a decisive effect and therefore the ones most likely to be contemplated for deliberately hostile use - the risk runs in the other direction. A lethal pathogen that could efficiently spread from one victim to another would be capable of initiating an intensifying cascade of disease that might ultimately threaten the entire world population. The 1918 influenza epidemic demonstrated the potential for a global contagion of this sort but not necessarily its outer limit.

---Adv Hemispheric Relations

The time is right to lift the Cuban Embargoreforms beginning in Cuba now Tisdall, 2013
[Simon, assistant editor and foreign affairs columnist of the Guardian. He was previously foreign editor of the Guardian and the Observer and served as White House corespondent and U.S. editor in

Washington D.C., Time for U.S. and Cuba to kiss and make up, 4-8-13, http://www.cnn.com/2013/04/08/opinion/opinion-simon-tisdall-cuba] /Wyo-MB These blinkered conservatives need to get over themselves. The 60-year stand-off between the U.S. and Cuba is absurd. It is counterproductive and harmful to both countries. It is time to end this Cold War anachronism, kiss and make up. Anger over Beyonc's supposed breach of the U.S. embargo rules restricting American citizens' travel to Cuba is symbolic of a deeper fear among right-wingers. Two key factors have changed since the days -- not so long ago -- when Washington seemed to be regularly threatening the Castro government with Iraq-style overthrow. One is that George W. Bush has been replaced by a Democrat. As Barack Obama enters his second and final term, immune to electoral imperatives, conservatives worry he may use his freedom of action to effect an historic rapprochement with Cuba. American liberals certainly believe he should do so. The second change is in Cuba itself, where the government, now led by Fidel Castro's brother, Raoul, has embarked on a cautious program of reform. The government -- dubbed the world's longest-running dictatorship by the American right -has even set a date for its own dissolution. Doing what "dictators" rarely do, Raoul Castro announced in February that in 2018, he would hand over power and that any successor would be subject to term limits. The Castro brothers have reportedly chosen a career communist, first vice president Miguel DiazCanel, to succeed them. But in reality, once their grip on power is relaxed, anything may happen. The two Florida Republicans who have been making a fuss about the Beyonce visit are Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Mario Diaz-Balart. They are veterans, and beneficiaries, of the anti-Castro campaign that has long been waged from Little Havana, in Miami, the home to the state's large Cuban exile population. The Cuban vote, as it is known, has traditionally gone to Republicans. But Obama's approach is the antithesis of the politics of hate and division. He broke that mold last year, making big gains among the Cuban American electorate. This result suggested the polarized ethnically-based politics of the past may be breaking down, said Julia Sweig of the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations in a recent article in The National Interest. "Having won nearly half of the Cuban American vote in Florida in 2012, a gain of 15 percentage points over 2008, Obama can move quickly on Cuba. If he were to do so, he would find a cautious but willing partner in Ral Castro, who needs rapprochement with Washington to advance his own reform agenda," Sweig said. Little wonder Republicans like Ros-Lehtinen are worried. If things go on like this, they could lose a large piece of their political raison d'etre. There are other reasons for believing the time is right for Obama to end the Cuba stalemate. The recent death of Hugo Chavez, Venezuela's influential president, has robbed Havana of a strong supporter, both political and financial. Chavez was not interested in a rapprochement with the U.S., either by Cuba or Venezuela. His revolutionary beliefs did not allow for an accommodation with the American "imperialists." His successors may not take so militant a line, especially given that Venezuela continues to trade heavily with the U.S., a privilege not allowed Cuba. The so-called "pink tide" that has brought several leftwing leaders to power in Latin America in the past decade is not exactly on the ebb, but the hostility countries such as Brazil, Ecuador and Bolivia felt towards the Bush administration has abated. In fact, according to Sweig's article, U.S. business with Latin America as a whole is booming, up 20% in 2011. The U.S. imports more crude oil from Venezuela and Mexico than from the Persian Gulf, including Saudi Arabia. The U.S. does three times more business with Latin America than with China. The stand-off over Cuba is an obstacle to advancing U.S. interests and business in Latin American countries, and vice versa. The continuation of the embargo has left the U.S. almost totally isolated at the United Nations, and at sharp odds with its major allies, including Britain and the EU. But more importantly, the continued ostracism of Cuba's people -- for they, not the Havana government, are the biggest losers -is unfair, unkind and unnecessary. If the U.S. wants full democracy in Cuba, then it should open up fully to ordinary Cubans. Tear down the artificial walls that separate the people of the two countries and, as Mao Zedong once said, let a hundred flowers bloom.

Cuba is a low-hanging fruit its a prerequisite to hemispheric relations Doherty 8 (Patrick, "An Obama Policy for Cuba," McClathy Newspapers, December
12,cuba.newamerica.net/publications/articles/2008/obama_policy_cuba_9301) With his national security team in place, President-elect Barack Obama's foreign policy principals will be immediately struck by
how many complex and expensive challenges they will face. Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Israel-Palestine and Russia, will all require enormous energy, all the tools in our foreign policy toolbox, and will all take years to resolve, if they can be resolved. None

of these crises will allow President Obama to signal swiftly to the world the kind of changes he proposes in American foreign policy. In contrast, U.S.-Cuba policy is low-hanging fruit: though of marginal importance
domestically, it could be changed immediately at little cost. At present,

that policy is a major black spot on America's

international reputation . For the rest of the world, our failed, obsolete and 50-year old policy toward Cuba goes against everything that Obama campaigned for, and the recent 185-3 U.N. vote to condemn the centerpiece of that policy , the embargo the 16th such vote in as many years makes that clear. The entire world believes our policy is wrong . And the world is right. The fact is that since Cuba stopped exporting revolution and
started exporting doctors and nurses, it ceased being a national security concern for the United States. And yet we restrict travel to the island unconstitutionally - and constrain Cuban-Americans in the amount of money they can send to their families on the island. Moreover, the economic embargo hurts the Cuban people more than the Cuban leadership, and our Helms-Burton legislation

imposes Washington's will on foreign businesses who wish to trade with Cuba, creating ill will in business communities from Canada to Brazil. Our Cuba policy is also an obstacle to striking a new relationship with the nations of Latin America. Any 21st-century policy toward Latin America will have to shift from the Cold War-era emphasis on right-wing governments and top-down economic adjustment to creating a hemispheric partnership to address many critical issues: the revival of militant leftism, the twin challenges of sustainability and inclusive economic growth, and the rising hemispheric influence of Russia and China. But until Washington ends the extraordinary sanctions that comprise the Cuba embargo, Latin America will remain at arms-length, and the problems in our backyard - Hugo Chavez, drugs, immigration, energy insecurity - will simply fester.

Lifting embargo solves US image and leadership in Latin America Fesler, 2009
[Lily, Research Associate The council on hemispheric relations, Cuban Oil: Havana's Potential GeoPolitical Bombshell, Washington Report on the Hemisphere29. 11. (Jun 18, 2009), Accessed online via Proquest] Wyo-MB In 1962, the proclamation initiating the embargo stated its purpose was to "promote national and hemispheric security by isolating the present Government of Cuba and thereby reducing the threat posed by its alignment with the Communist powers." With the end of the Cold War, the need to protect the U.S. from communism disappeared along with the rationale for the Cuban embargo. The U.S. enthusiastically trades with communist nations like China and Vietnam, so punishing Cuba for its form of government is clearly no longer a valid justification. It also has been argued that the embargo has helped the Castros stay in power, rather than inhibiting them. The Castros have turned the "blockade" into the scapegoat for all of Cuba's economic woes. This theory may not be entirely fair, especially as the U.S. is cur- ently Cuba's larg- est food exporter due to a loophole in the embargo. In 2000, President Bill Clinton signed a waiver allowing food and agricultural prod- ucts to be sold to Cuba on humanitarian grounds, although much of what is sent is far from being hu- manitarian and is loaded with inhibiting red tape. The waiver includes goods like beer, soda, drink mixes, beauty products and kitchen cabinets, as well as staples like corn, poultry and wheat. The U.S. now earns upwards of $700 million annually from the Cuba trade. Some critics have argued that the best way to expose the inadequacies of Castro rule would be to lift the embargo, and thus respond to Havana's claim that the U.S. is the

cause of much of Cuban privation. Further Steps President Obama may have hoped that his recent overtures towards Cuba would temporarily satisfy his critics, but instead they have merely amplified calls for Washington to take more forthright steps. Ending restrictions on Cuban-American travel was done in a discriminatory fashion. In a democratic country, every American, irrespective of their background, should be able to travel wherever their neighbors travel; nationality or family relationships should not afford certain Americans special privileges, or the lack of them. The lifting of restrictions on remittances was a step in the right direction, but it has yet to significantly affect Cuban finances. In fact, remittances to Cuba have not increased since they were lifted two months ago, according to the president of Cimex. Constructive Engagement A rising tide of US public opinion is calling on Washington to lift the outdated and malfunctioning embargo on Cuba, a move that would not only benefit the beleaguered Cuban population and be of some value to the oil-needy United States, but also improve the tarnished image of the U.S. in Latin America. Right now, the House of Representatives is considering the "United States- Cub a Trade Normalization Act of 2009", which recognizes that "Cuba is no longer a threat," the embargo is "not fulfilling its purpose for which it was established," and that "trade and commerce" are the best routes to democracy and human rights. This bill would lift the trade embargo and allow all Americans to travel to Cuba, both much needed changes. Representative William Delahunt, who is sponsoring the bill, has said he doesn't expect a vote until November. Nevertheless, its prospects for passing are high. Recently, Hillary Clinton stated, "We have to recognize that our country is not perfect either, that some of the difficulties that we had historically in forging strong and lasting relationships in our hemisphere are a result of us perhaps not listening, perhaps not paying enough attention." The U.S. now has the chance to reject its historically arrogant operating style in the region, and disprove Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega's recent claim that, when it comes to U.S. policy, "the president has changed, but not Latin American policy." Congress should prioritize pushing the Trade Normalization Act through the House and the Senate to pave the way for some advancements in the U.S. and Cuban economies, and to improve Washington's still lagging image in Latin America.

The plan solves leadership in Latin America, the Cuban embargo is the key stumbling block to boosting relations White, 2013
[Robert, International Herald Tribune, A chance to remake U.S.-Cuba relations, 3-9-13, Lexis] /Wyo-MB An end to the Cuba embargo would send a powerful signal to all of Latin America that the United States wants a new, warmer relationship with democratic forces seeking social change throughout the Americas. I joined the State Department as a Foreign Service officer in the 1950s and chose to serve in Latin America in the 1960s. I was
inspired by President John F. Kennedy's creative response to the revolutionary fervor then sweeping Latin America. The 1959 Cuban revolution, led by the charismatic Fidel Castro, had inspired revolts against the cruel dictatorships and corrupt pseudodemocracies that had dominated the region since the end of Spanish and Portuguese rule in the 19th century. Kennedy had a charisma of his own, and it captured the imaginations of leaders who wanted democratic change, not violent revolution. Kennedy reacted to the threat of continental insurrection by creating the Alliance for Progress, a kind of Marshall Plan for the hemisphere that was calculated to achieve the same kind of results that saved Western Europe from communism. He pledged billions of dollars to this effort. In hindsight, it may have been overly ambitious, even nave, but Kennedy's focus on Latin America rekindled the promise of the Good Neighbor Policy of Franklin D. Roosevelt and transformed the whole concept of inter-American relations. Tragically, after Kennedy's assassination in 1963, the ideal of the Alliance for Progress crumbled and ''la noche mas larga'' - ''the longest night'' - began for the proponents of Latin American democracy. Military regimes flourished, democratic governments withered, moderate political and civil leaders were labeled Communists, rights of free speech and assembly were curtailed and human dignity crushed, largely because the United States abandoned all standards save that of anti-communism. During my Foreign Service career, I did what I could to oppose policies that supported dictators and closed off democratic alternatives. In 1981, as the ambassador to El Salvador, I refused a demand by the secretary of state, Alexander M. Haig Jr., that I use official channels to cover up the Salvadoran military's responsibility for the murders of four American churchwomen. I was fired and forced out of the Foreign Service. The Reagan administration, under the illusion that Cuba was the power driving the Salvadoran revolution, turned its policy over to the Pentagon and C.I.A., with predictable results. During the 1980s the United States helped expand the Salvadoran military, which was dominated by uniformed assassins. We Americans armed them, trained them and covered up their crimes. After our counterrevolutionary efforts failed to end the Salvadoran conflict, the Defense Department asked its research institute, the RAND Corporation, what had gone wrong. RAND analysts found that U.S. policy makers had refused to accept the obvious truth that the insurgents were rebelling against social injustice and state terror. As a result,

''we pursued a policy unsettling to ourselves, for ends humiliating to the Salvadorans and at a cost disproportionate to any conventional conception of the national interest.'' Over the subsequent quarter-century, a series of profound political, social and economic changes have undermined the traditional power bases in Latin America and, with them, longstanding regional institutions like the Organization of American States. The organization, which is headquartered in Washington and which excluded Cuba in 1962, was seen as irrelevant by Chvez. He promoted the creation of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States - which excludes the United States and Canada - as an alternative. At a regional meeting that included Cuba and excluded the United States, Chvez said that ''the most positive thing for the independence of our continent is that we meet alone without the hegemony of empire.'' Chvez was masterful at manipulating America's antagonism toward Fidel Castro as a rhetorical stick with which to attack the United States as an imperialist aggressor, an enemy of progressive change, interested mainly in treating Latin America as a vassal continent, a source of cheap commodities and labor. Like its predecessors, the Obama administration has given few signs that it has grasped the magnitude of these changes or cares about their consequences. After

President Obama took office in 2009, Latin America's leading statesman at the time, Luiz Incio Lula da Silva, then the president of Brazil, urged Obama to normalize relations with Cuba. Lula, as he is universally known, correctly identified our Cuba policy as the chief stumbling block to renewed ties with Latin America, as it had been since the very early years of the Castro regime. After the failure of the 1961
Bay of Pigs invasion, Washington set out to accomplish by stealth and economic strangulation what it had failed to do by frontal attack. But the clumsy mix of covert action and porous boycott succeeded primarily in bringing shame on the United States and turning Castro into a folk hero. And even now, despite the relaxing of travel restrictions and Ral Castro's announcement that he will retire in 2018, the implacable hatred of many within the Cuban exile community continues. The fact that two of the three Cuban-American members of the Senate - Marco Rubio of Florida and Ted Cruz of Texas - are rising stars in the Republican Party complicates further the potential for a recalibration of CubanAmerican relations. (The third member, Senator Robert Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, is the new chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, but his power has been weakened by a continuing ethics controversy.) Are there any other examples in the history of diplomacy where the leaders of a small, weak nation can prevent a great power from acting in its own best interest merely by staying alive?

The re-election of President Obama, and the death of Chvez, give America a chance to reassess the irrational hold on our imaginations that Fidel Castro has exerted for five decades. The president and his new secretary of state, John Kerry, should quietly reach out to Latin American leaders like President Juan Manuel Santos of Colombia and Jos Miguel Insulza, secretary general of the Organization of American States. The message should be simple: The president is prepared to show some flexibility on Cuba and asks your help. Such a simple request could transform the Cuban issue from a bilateral problem into a multilateral challenge. It would then be up to Latin Americans to devise a policy that would help Cuba achieve a sufficient measure of democratic change to justify its reintegration into a hemisphere composed entirely of elected governments. If, however, our present policy paralysis continues, we will soon see the emergence of two rival camps, the United States versus Latin America. While Washington would continue to enjoy friendly relations with individual countries like Brazil, Mexico and Colombia, the vision of Roosevelt and Kennedy of a hemisphere of partners cooperating in matters of common concern would be reduced to a historical footnote.

Hemispheric relations is key to solving organized crime Brookings 8 (The Brookings Institution. November. Rethinking. U.S.Latin American Relations: A
Hemispheric Partnership for a Turbulent World http://www.brookings.edu/reports/2008/1124_latin_america_partnership.aspx)
Crime and insecurity are growing scourges in the Western Hemisphere. The LAC region has only 9 percent of the worlds populat ion, yet it has 27 percent of global homicidesabout 140,000 a year. Crime, especially organized crime, poses a serious threat to public security and undermines public institutions and the legitimate business sector. Organized crime in

the hemisphere today encompasses a variety of criminal enterprises, including narcotics trafficking, money laundering, alien smuggling, human trafficking, kidnapping, and arms and counterfeit goods smuggling. The United States stands at the crossroads of many of these illicit flows. Violent youth gangs, such as the Mara Salvatrucha, have a presence in the United
States. Some 2,000 guns cross the United StatesMexico border from north to south every day, helping to fuel violence among drug cartels and with the army and police. About 17,500 persons are smuggled into the United States annually as trafficking victims, and another 500,000 come as illegal immigrants. The United States remains both a leading consuming country across the full range of illicit narcotics and a country with major domestic production of methamphetamines, cannabis, and other synthetic narcotics. The

nations of the Western Hemisphere have adopted a variety of international instruments to tackle organized crime. Virtually every country in the Americas has ratified the 2000 UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime. Most of the hemispheres countries have also signed and ratified international agreements that deal with the trafficking of persons, the smuggling of migrants, illicit firearms trafficking, and the illicit drug trade. Yet a

significant reduction in crime in the hemisphere remains elusive. The narcotics trade remains at the core of organized crime in the hemisphere. This is by far the most lucrative of illegal trades, generating hundreds of billions of dollars a year. Its immense cash flow, vast employment opportunities, and sophisticated networks feed other kinds of criminal activity and allow drug traffickers to adapt with extraordinary speed to governments counternarcotics efforts. The drug trade is
also singularly adept at corrupting judicial, political, and law enforcement institutions. In Mexico, open war between the cartels and all levels of government has killed 4,000 people so far in 2008 aloneabout as many casualties as the United States has sustained in almost six years of war in Iraq. This violence already threatens to spill into the United States and to destabilize Mexicos political institutions. Because it lies at the core of regional criminal activity, this section focuses on the illegal drug trade. A

hemisphere-wide counternarcotics strategy encompassing consuming, producing, and transshipment countries is required to combat not only the illegal drug trade but also other forms of crime.

Were at the tipping point stopping Latin American drug trade is key to cutting off Global supply chains Baker 8 (Roger, "The Big Business of Organized Crime in Mexico," Stratfor, February
13,http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/big_business_organized_crime_mexico)
This is a fundamental aspect of the phenomenon we are seeing now. It is a classic case of organized crime. The

Mexican drug cartels are, for the most part, organized crime groups. What distinguishes Mexican organized crime groups and others from revolutionaries, terrorists and hybrid organizations such as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) is the underlying principle of making money. In the global system, there is an economy of crime. It currently is built around drugs, but any item that is illegal in one place and legal in other and has an artificially inflated price quickly can become the center of the system. Human trafficking, smuggling and counterfeiting are cases in point, as was alcohol during prohibition. Products move from where
they are legal (or at least not well-controlled) to where they are in demand but illegal. The money, of course, moves in the opposite direction. That money eventually ends up in the normal banking system. Organized crime wants to make money and it might want to manipulate the system, but it does not seek to overthrow the system or transform society. Insurgencies and revolutions seek to transform. In the end, organized crime is about making money. Endemic organized crime leads to corruption and collusion, and in the long term often burns itself out as the money earned through its activities eventually moves into the legal economic system. When organized crime groups become rich enough, they move their money into legitimate businesses in order to launder it or a least use it, eventually turning it into established money that has entered the realm of business. This can get more complicated when organized crime and insurgents/guerrillas overlap, as is the case with FARC. The problems we are seeing in Mexico are similar to those we have seen in past cases, in which criminal elements become factionalized. In Mexico, these factions are fighting over control of drug routes and domain. The battles that are taking place are largely the result of fighting among the organized crime groups, rather than cartels fighting the Mexican government. In some ways, the Mexican military and security forces are a third party in this not the focus. Ultimately, the cartels not the government control the level of violence and security in the country. As

new groups emerge and evolve, they frequently can be quite violent and in some sense anarchic. When a new group of drug dealers moves into a neighborhood, it might be flamboyant and excessively violent. It is the same on a much larger scale with these organized crime cartels. However, although cartel infighting is tolerated to
some extent, the government is forced to react when the level of violence starts to get out of hand. This is what we are seeing in Mexico. However, given that

organized crime tends to become more conservative as it grows and becomes more
For example, during the summer of 2007,

established, the situation in Mexico could be reaching a tipping point.

the Gulf and Sinaloa cartels declared a temporary truce as their rivalry began to impact their business operations. As

the competition among the cartels settles, they could begin to draw back their forces and deal with those members who are excessively violent or out of control. This is simply a way of assuring their operations. The
American Mafia followed a similar pattern, evolving into an organism with strong discipline and control. There is a question now as to whether the Mexican cartels are following the American model or imitating the Colombian model, which is a hybrid of organized crime and an insurgency. In fact, they might be following both. Mexico, in some sense, is two countries. The North has a much higher standard of living than the rest of the country, especially the area south of Mexico City. In the North, we could ultimately see a move in the direction of the American Mafia, whereas in the South the home of the domestic guerrilla groups Zapatista National Liberation Army and Popular Revolutionary Army it could shift more toward the Colombian model. While the situation is evolving, the main battle in Mexico continues to be waged among various cartel factions, rather than among the cartels and the Mexican government or security forces. The goal of organized crime, and the goal of many of these cartels, is to get rich within the system, with minor variations on how that is achieved. A revolutionary group, on the other hand, wants to overthrow and change the system. The cartels obviously are working outside the legal framework, but they are not putting forward an alternative nor do they seem to want to. Rather, they can achieve their goals simply through payoffs and other forms of corruption. The most likely outcome is not a merger between the cartels and the guerrilla groups, or even a shift in the cartels priorities to include government overthrow. However, as the government turns up the pressure, the concern is that the cartels will adopt insurgent-style

tactics.

Organized crime is not street crime; it is systemic geopolitical crime. It is a significant social

force, bringing huge amounts of capital into a system. This flow of money can reshape the society. But this criminal supply chain runs parallel to, and in many cases intersects, the legitimate global supply chain. Whether through smuggling and money laundering or increased investment capital and higher consumption rates, the underground and aboveground economies intersect. U.S. and Mexican counternarcotics operations have an instant impact on the supply chain.
Such operations shift traffic patterns across the border, affect the level of stability in the border areas where there is a significant amount of manufacturing and trade and impact sensitive social and political issues between the two countries, particularly immigration. In this light, then, violence is only one small part of the total impact that cartel activities and government counternarcotics efforts are having on the border.

Organized crime makes nuclear and CBW warfare inevitable outweighs the risk of state-state warfare
CSIS 9 (CEnter for Strategic and International Studies, "Revolution 6 - Conflict," Global Strategy
Institute," gsi.csis.org/index.php?Itemid=59&id=30&option=com_content&task=view) The shift from interstate to intrastate war and the increasing capacity of non-state actors to commit acts of megaviolence reflect how patterns of conflict have changed since the end of the Cold War. Today warfare is increasingly described as asymmetric. Traditional military powers, like the United States, are confronted by increasingly atypical adversaries non-state ideologues, transnational criminal syndicates, and rogue states that employ unconventional tactics in wars ambiguous in both place and time. Today, conflict is more likely to occur between warring factions on residential streets than between armies on battlefields. As before, many belligerents still fight for power and/or wealth, but an increasing number are fighting purely for ideology. Acts of terrorism have become the major vehicle for their malcontent, especially for well-organized and well-funded Islamic groups like al-Qaeda. The attacks of September 11, 2001 and similar incidences in recent decades have shown that even small groups of terrorists can carry out sophisticated attacks that result in an incredible loss of life. The proliferation of nuclear and biological technologies only ups the ante for future incidences. [19] Terrorism and Transnational Crime Over the past few decades the size and scope of terrorists abilities have become truly alarming. Terrorist organizations have evolved from scrappy bands of dissidents into well-organized groups with vast human and capital resources. This situation is
forcing governments around the world to develop strategies to both neutralize these groups where they operate and maintain security at home. The United States has met some success in combating terrorist organizations, killing high-level officials and isolating certain sub-groups, but the War on Terror has had the unintended consequence of forming micro-actors, individuals driven by foreign military operations to militant extremism. These individuals, or groups of individuals, operate in poorly organized cells and as such use internet technologies to spread their message and share plans of attack. Perhaps paradoxically, this disorganization and decentralization makes these groups a greater threat to the military as it is harder to detect and track them. [1] Terrorism

has also had the effect of heightening tensions between sovereign nations. After the Mumbai terrorist attacks of 2008, India and Pakistan neared war after India accused Pakistan of harboring terrorists and Pakistan refused to turn over individuals for prosecution. To finance their illegal activity, terrorist organizations are becoming involved in transnational crime, especially drug trafficking . Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld, Director of the American Center for Democracy, has stated, The huge revenues from the heroin trade fill the coffers of the terrorists and thwart any attempt to stabilize the region. [2] Over the last two decades, we have witnessed a surge in transnational crime, in large part because of the dissolution of Cold War alliances that helped keep criminal syndicates in check. Organized crime
activity is not limited to the smuggling of illicit drugs, but includes the trafficking of arms, drugs, and human beings. Weapons of Mass Destruction According to President Obama, In a strange turn of history, the threat of global nuclear war has gone down, but the

risk of a nuclear attack has gone up. *3+ International mechanisms established in recent decades have by and large kept the nuclear ambitions of superpowers at bay. However, the fall of the Soviet Union and the increasing prevalence and power of criminal networks have made it more likely that a single actor could get his or her hands on a Weapon of Mass Destruction (WMD). The term WMD is used to describe any weapons technology (radiological, chemical, biological, or nuclear) that is capable of killing a large

number of people. [4] By and large it is believed that WMD pose the greatest threat in the possession of belligerent states like Iraq, North Korea, and Iran. However, experts

are warning that a more urgent threat would come from WMD in the hands of non-state actors. Nuclear material and technical knowledge are frequently exchanged on the black market, especially in post-Soviet countries, where security personnel charged with guarding nuclear facilities are easily bribed into selling nuclear plans and materials. [5] With the help of the United States, Russia and
its neighbors have made strides in securing these sites and improving oversight of the nuclear industry, but there is no telling how much material has been traded over the years. [6] The

WMD threat does not only come from groups operating in the developing world, however, as recent biochemical attacks attest. The prime suspect in the anthrax attacks of 2001 was a government scientist, and the sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway was committed by a religious organization that enjoyed official government recognition. The ease with which these materials have become available, especially through online resources, is forcing governments to restrict their use. International governing bodies will need to find an acceptable paradigm that allows for the
benign applications of these technologies, as in power generation, while deterring the nefarious ones.

Organized crime in

Latin America causes regional instability

Bagley 1 (Bruce, GLOBALIZATION AND TRANSNATIONAL ORGANIZED CRIME: THE RUSSIAN MAFIA IN
LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN, School of International Studies at the University of Miami Coral Gables, November 15, http://www.as.miami.edu/internationalstudies/pdf/Bagley%20GLOBALIZATION%202.pdf)
The dangers and risks to Lain American governments and societies that emanate from expanding Russian mafiya activities within and outside their national borders are usually more indirect than direct, although nonetheless real because of their obliqueness. In Colombia, for example,

Russian mafia arms-for-cocaine smuggling operations have unquestionably upgraded the FARC guerrillas arsenal and enhanced their firepower vis a vis the Colombian police and armed forces, thereby contributing to the intensification of the countrys internal conflicts. The fact that the Russian mafia
appears equally willing to sell arms to Colombias rightwing paramilitaries may underscore their lack of ideological involvement in Colombias decades-old civil strife,

but it in no way mitigates the profoundly negative consequences that their illicit activities hold for Colombian political stability and state security. The Russians international money laundering
services are provided in a similarly non-partisan fashion -- for a price, they will launder drug trafficker, guerrilla or paramilitary money on an equal opportunity basis. In

doing so, of course, they facilitate the clandestine movement of the narco-dollars that help underwrite the on-going violence in Colombia.[83] Even for those Latin American countries not engulfed in civil wars such as the one raging in Colombia, Russian illegal arms trafficking and arms-for-drugs deals in alliance with local criminal gangs significantly increase the firepower available to violent elements of society and make them more difficult and dangerous for law enforcement to control. Brazils favelas, for instance, have become virtual war zones, at least in part as a result of Russian drug and arms trafficking links with local criminal organizations in that country. Likewise, the Central American maras have become progressively better armed and threatening to social stability and state security throughout the Isthmus as a result of their linkages with Russian (along with Mexican, Colombian and North American) transnational organized crime groups. The
Russian mafia is not, by any means, the only source of weapons in the region. The United States itself is a major purveyor of small arms throughout Latin America and the Caribbean and elsewhere in the world.[84] But given the political chaos and relative availability of blackmarket arms in Russia and most other former Soviet Bloc countries, Russian

crime groups enjoy significant comparative advantages in this clandestine market and, thus, have emerged as major players in the international illicit arms trade.[85] The consequences for Latin America and the Caribbean are visible on a daily basis in the surging rates of gang warfare and violent crime registered in every major urban area in the region. Independent of the arms black-market, the Russian mafias criminal strategies and tactics for penetration into the region are inherently, even if indirectly, threatening to institutional stability and state security. Russian crime groups do not normally seek to displace the local criminal organizations ensconced in each Latin American or
Caribbean country, but rather to cooperate with them in order to facilitate their own illegal operations and to elude detection and arrest. In doing so,

they clearly strengthen the local crime groups with which they affiliate by providing them with expanded markets in Europe and Russia for contraband such as cocaine, heroin and methamphetamines, by sharing new smuggling routes into (and networks of protection and distribution in) these lucrative markets, and by helping to launder the profits derived from their illicit enterprises through

Russian channels at home and abroad. The Russian mafias marriage of convenience with the Arrellano Felix cartel based in
Tijuana, Mexico, illustrates the dangerous potential of such alliances. The May 3, 2001, 12 ton cocaine seizure on the Russian and Ukrainiancrewed Svesda Maru constituted the largest cocaine bust in U.S. maritime history. The money and arms obtained by the Arrellano Felix mob through their linkages with Russian crime groups unquestionably make the Tijuana cartel wealthier, more able to purchase Mexican police and political protection through bribery, and better armed and equipped to ward off rival gangs or to resist Mexican and U.S. law enforcement efforts mounted against them. The

Russians preferred tactics of bribery, blackmail and intimidation tend to exercise corrosive pressures on key private and public sector institutions, thereby undermining individual states abilities to preserve the stable economic and social environment, effective law enforcement capacity and level playing field required to promote legal business activity and attract foreign investment essential to long-term economic growth. Traditional and longstanding patterns of patrimonial rule,
personalism, clientelism, and bureaucratic corruption throughout Latin America have encouraged and facilitated Russian crime groups resorts to these favored tactics (as they have for domestic criminal organizations as well). Time

and again, many (although certainly not all) police and customs officials, military officers, judges, politicians, and businessmen have proven susceptible to such enticements in large and small countries alike throughout the region.[86]
The Russian mafias expanding presence in Latin America and the Caribbean does not currently constitute a direct security threat to either the individual states of the region or to the United States. It does, however, contribute

indirectly to the entire regions growing economic, social and political turmoil and insecurity and thus poses a major challenge to economic growth, effective democratic governance and long-run regime stability throughout the hemisphere.

That causes global war Rochlin 94 (James,. Professor of Political Science at Okanagan University College. Discovering the
Americas: the evolution of Canadian foreign policy towards Latin America, p. 130-131)
While there were economic motivations for Canadian policy in Central America, security considerations were perhaps more important. Canada possessed an interest in promoting stability in the face of a potential decline of U.S. hegemony in the Americas. Perceptions of declining U.S. influence in the region which had some credibility in 1979-1984 due to the wildly inequitable divisions of wealth in some U.S. client states in Latin America, in addition to political repression, under-development, mounting external debt, anti-American sentiment produced by decades of subjugation to U.S. strategic and economic interests, and so on were linked to the prospect of explosive events occurring in the hemisphere. Hence, the

Central American imbroglio was viewed as a fuse which could ignite a cataclysmic process throughout the region. Analysts at the time worried that in a worst-case scenario, instability created by a regional war, beginning in Central America and spreading elsewhere in Latin America, might preoccupy Washington to the extent that the United States would be unable to perform adequately its important hegemonic role in the international arena a concern expressed by the director of research for Canadas Standing Committee Report on Central America. It was feared that such a predicament could generate increased global instability and perhaps even a hegemonic war. This
is one of the motivations which led Canada to become involved in efforts at regional conflict resolution, such as Contadora, as will be discussed in the next chapter.

Window of opportunity now is key to the plan Pomerantz PhD, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy 1/1
(Phyllis, 1/1/13, The Globe and Mail, Nows the time to lift the U.S. embargo on Cuba, http://www.theglobeandmail.com/commentary/nows-the-time-to-lift-the-us-embargo-oncuba/article6790494/?service=print , 6/23/13. RJ) Now that the election is over, the United States has a rare opportunity to do away with one of its most pointless and ineffective foreign policies the embargo of Cuba that is as obsolete as the cool 1950s and 1960s sedans still running on the streets of Havana. Just a few weeks ago, U.S.
President Barack Obama sat down with leaders in Myanmar, an international pariah for many years with a military responsible for thousands of civilian deaths.

The United States now trades actively with Vietnam, which remains under the control of the same Communist Party against whom it once fought and lost a terrible war. The U.S. has a normal, albeit complex, diplomatic and commercial relationship with China, another Communist country. Yet, Cuba is still treated as a pariah, a bizarre relic of the Cold War. I just returned from a visit there and realized that
lifting the embargo would be to both countries advantage. Americans would have full access to Cubas rich culture and natural beauty, and some new trade and investment opportunities. Cuba would have expanded economic options, which it needs to improve the material well-being of its citizens. The U.S. has had normal diplomatic and commercial relationships with regimes and despots of all stripes from Mobutu in Zaire to Mubarak in Egypt. The list is long. So what makes Cuba so special? Is it because it is so close to the continental United States? No the U.S. has had a good, if testy, formal relationship with Mexico for many years, including when it was a one-party state. Is it because Cuba poses a military threat? Maybe, once upon a time. But if Americans got over the Vietnam War, they surely can put the Cuban (or was that Soviet?) missile crisis behind them, especially since the U.S. now has quite a normal relationship with Russia. What about a security

threat? Arguably, almost every country could be wittingly or unwittingly harboring extremist plotters. Someho w, though, I dont think al-Qaeda operatives are drinking mojitos on Cuban beaches. Cuba loosened its ban on organized religion some time ago, but imagining either the government or its people sympathetic to Islamic fundamentalism is quite a stretch. Is it because Cuba lacks economic opportunities for U.S. business? Granted, its not a potential powerhouse such as Russia, China or even Vietnam for commercial purposes. But the U.S. has maintained good relationships (and made money) with many small, poor countries. Whats one more? Is it because Americans are standing on principle over Cubas human-rights record or strident rhetoric? Its hard to argue this when the White House has entertained leaders of countries with even worse records and positions. Moreover, many of those countries do not have education, health-care or food systems that reach the poor. Cuba does, although increasingly it is a challenge. Of course, America should care about human rights and, along with that, everyone should have access to adequate food, education and health care. But sadly, none of these reasons explain why the U.S. keeps a strict embargo on Cuba and has no diplomatic relationship with it. No, the

real reason is because of a small vocal minority (Cuban-American exiles and their families) who happen to be clustered in an electoral swing state (Florida) that gives them political clout. Some say the attitudes of the younger generation are softening toward Cuba. Does Washington really need to wait another generation or two? The U.S. stand on Cuba is incomprehensible and only serves to look hypocritical and arbitrary in the eyes of a world that doesnt understand the intricacies of American politics. Now that the election is over, there is a window of opportunity to open up a full commercial and diplomatic relationship. Mr. Obama should use the full extent of his executive powers to immediately relax restrictions, and Congress should pass legislation lifting the remaining legal obstacles. Its time to forget about old grudges and remember that the best way to convert an enemy into a friend is to embrace him. Instead of admiring Havanas old
cars, Americans should be selling them new ones.

Removing Sanctions now allows free flow of information which will create change for the better in Cuba. Huddleston, former co-director of the Brookings Project on U.S. Policy Toward a Cuba in Transition, 08 (Vicki, 3-10-08, Brookings, Cuba Embargos Usefulness has Run its Course, http://www.brookings.edu/research/opinions/2008/03/10-cuba-huddleston, 6/23/13, ND)
There can no longer be any doubt that our

isolation of Cuba did not and cannot bring about the end of the revolution. What will bring about the revolution's demise are old age, illness and death. More important, the revolution will evolve as it loses its founding fathers and becomes increasingly less isolated from its neighbors though the Internet, television, travelers and the flow of information. But how fast and how far the revolution evolves depends upon U.S. policy. If we remove the barriers to communication, we will speed the forces of change. Just as was the case in Eastern Europe as a result of the Helsinki agreements, the Cuban people will be empowered by human contact, the free flow of information, and the support and encouragement of Americans and Cuban Americans from Florida to California. If U.S. policy can deal with Cuba -- not as a domestic political issue -- but as one sovereign state to another, then we will resume official diplomatic relations with the exchange of ambassadors and begin -- once again -- to talk about matters that affect the well being and security of both our countries, namely migration, anti-narcotics, health and the environment. Starting a dialogue will allow us to press Cuba's leaders to respect the principles that we and the region hold dear: human rights, rule of law and freedom. Removing the barriers to communications and to normal diplomatic relations are not concessions as some would claim. Rather, they are practical initiatives that will reduce the dependence of the Cuban people on the Cuban state by providing them with alternative sources of information and resources to improve their daily lives. More critically, a policy based on helping the Cuban people succeed would enable them to build civil society and begin a process of growing democracy from the bottom up. But the Bush administration is standing by its policy that Cuba must
change first, tying any modification in our unilateral embargo to the end of the Castro regime. This does us and the Cuban people a disservice because it ties our policy to that of Ral Castro's. By waiting for the Cuban regime to act, we make policy initiatives that would bring about change, dependent on the actions of the Cuban government. The

longer we wait the more likely that Cuba's new leaders will manage without us. In three to five years, Cuba, with help from foreign investors, will have exploited deep-sea oil and its sugar cane ethanol, adding billions to its annual revenues and making the island a net exporter of energy. Worse, the longer we wait, the slower the process of change. If we want to play a role in Cuba's future, we must act now to encourage change in Cuba, by the Cuban people.

Obama on board but Congress is Key to Lift Embargo National Security Program, Think Tank, 2010 (9/16, Third Way, Third Way Memo End the Embargo of Cuba, http://content.thirdway.org/publications/326/Third_Way_Memo__End_the_Embargo_of_Cuba.pdf, 6/30/13, MK)
Although the Obama administration took the largely symbolic step of extending the embargo for another year under the Trading with the Enemy Act last year, the President did relax some longstanding restrictions by taking action to make it easier for Cuban-Americans to visit and send remittances to family members in Cuba. The administration also recently hinted at plans to reduce travel restrictions for academic, cultural, and religious groups later this year.12 While the executive branch can continue to chip away at these longstanding restrictions, the law requires that Congress will ultimately need to pass legislation to repeal the embargo. Under existing law, established by the Helms-Burton Act, the embargo cannot be lifted until the Cuban people democratically elect a new government and the transition government is in place. While President Obama could take an initial step by refusing to issue the annual extension of Cubas national emergency status under the Trading with the Enemy Act,13 lifting the embargo will ultimately require that Congress pass and the President sign into law legislation to repeal both the Torricelli Act and the Helms-Burton Act. Passing HR 4645 would be a positive first step, but Congress will need to take further action to see that the embargo is lifted in its entirety. Opponents to lifting the embargo have raised a number of objections. None of them withstand scrutiny. Peter Brookes, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense under George W. Bush, said that lifting the embargo could lead to Cuba becoming a regional power, arguing that the US *doesnt+ need a pumped-up Cuba that could become a serious menace to US interests in Latin America, the Caribbeanor beyond.14 While Venezuela, for example, has challenged the US on some interests, its anti-American leadership has not been able to present a serious counterweight to the US or have a significant impact on US security. Given that Venezuela is a much bigger economic player than Cuba due to its oil revenues, it is highly unlikely that Cuba would pose a significant geopolitical challenge to the US, even if significant sums of money enter Cubas economy. Former Senator Mel Martinez has argued against lifting the embargo, claiming that the US needs to support pro-democracy activists in Cuba, not provide the Castro regime with a resource windfall.15 Florida Rep. Tom Rooney has argued that lifting the embargo would serve to reward Cubas leadership for its decades-long record of human rights abuses and allow the abuse to continue due to the absence of pressure from the US.16 The US has used the embargo as an effort to pressure the communist leadership for nearly fifty years, yet the status quo remains unchanged. If a possible downside of lifting the embargo is that the situation will not change, then the US has nothing to lose by making an effort to normalize relations with Cuba. By refusing to engage Cuba and make efforts to move Cuba forward, the US is in a weak position to criticize the Cuban leadership. Lifting the embargo and normalizing relations would put the US in a stronger position to bring about change through economic advancements that could in turn result in domestic demands within Cuba for greater social and political freedoms. After five decades of failure, the arguments for lifting the embargo are far more compelling than those in support of leaving the status quo unchanged. The US should leave the Cold War-era policy in the past and look to engage Cuba through open trade and formal diplomatic relations, which could initiate the transition to a more open, cooperative, and potentially democratic Cuba that policymakers have sought for half a century.