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The United States should maintain the Cuba embargo because Cuba has not met the conditions required to lift it, and the US will look weak for lifting the sanctions.

Proclamation 3447 signed by President Kennedy on Feb. 3, 1962, established the embargo against Cuba to reduce “the threat posed by its alignment with the communist powers.” [35]

The embargo was strengthened by the 1992 Cuban Democracy Act, and the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity (Libertad) Act of 1996 (also known as Helms-Burton) [49] which specified conditions for terminating the embargo. [6] [49] According to US law, Cuba must legalize all political activity, release all political prisoners, commit to free and fair elections in the transition to representative democracy, grant freedom to the press, respect internationally recognized human rights, and allow labor unions. Since Cuba has not met these conditions, the embargo should not be lifted.

Lifting the sanctions unilaterally would be an act of appeasement that could embolden Cuba to join forces with other countries such as Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia, China, and Iran to promote anti-American sentiments or socialism in the Western Hemisphere. [1] The United States should not risk sending the message that it can be waited out or that seizing US property in foreign countries, as Castro did in Cuba when he took power, will be tolerated. [59]

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