Actual reasons, however, are more likely to include a combination of history, traditional desires to turn Cuba into a Puerto Rico-like protectorate, and CANF influence. Closer examination of our supposed reasons for maintaining the longest embargo in modern history, reveal the CANF influence, and the sad fact that this issue represents the last stage where extremists and hard-liners can make a public display of toughness and take a nostalgic swipe at communism. Many of the governments that the U.S. military has set up or supported in South America and the Middle East are dictatorial in nature, but as long as these governments cooperate with U.S. economic demands, we don't try to starve their people into civil war. Under U.S. control, grave violations of human rights were a daily occurrence.
China massacres dissenters, and yet is granted favored nation status.
In April of 1998 the United Nations human rights commission rejected a U.S. resolution criticizing Cuba over human rights issue, siting that the criticism no longer applies. Ironically, from the U.S. government's perspective, that same logic does not apply to Cuba. In March of 1998, however, the Pentagon concluded that Cuba poses no significant threat to U.S. national security, and Cuba is not even mentioned in the Defense Department's 1997 report of worrisome states pursuing or possessing biological and chemical weapons. And it doesn't begin to compare with current human rights violations in many countries with which we maintain friendly relations.