From 1960 to 2014, United States policy toward Cuba remained unchanged. When Communism in the Soviet Union died, the Cuba-Soviet relationship was debilitated. In the middle of this situation was when the United States decided to recall its foreign policy toward Cuba. Before 1959, the foreign policies the U.S. used toward Cuba developed in political coercion between these two countries, in support of corrupt leaders to the U.S. and it also led to several military interventions. Unfortunately, after 1959 when Cuba turned toward a Communist society, the relationship between U.S. and Cuba evolved into adversity, where there was not any type of consensus between them. United States policy toward Cuba was based on mistaken assumptions that were confirmed over time. Some of the assumptions where the U.S. rested its policy argued that most of Cubans hated the Castro government, thus a good consolidation between political isolation and economic pressure could change or reform this regime.

However, it was proved with the time the isolation policies and the United States embargo did not accomplish their key target, which was to displace the Castro’s regimen or force it to reform it. This policy was successful just in their secondary objective of cutting Cuban people off from the world and making them poorer. This situation just drove an existent repressive government to be even more repressive while charging it on American obstruction in domestic Cuban affairs and also blaming the critical bad economic situation of Cuba on the embargo. All these conflicts between these two nations seemed to be resolved in December 2014, when the United States President Barack Obama took the decision to normalize the relationship between these two. This decision proved that the U.S. policy toward Cuba has remained unchanged for too many decades. As Obama indicated in his speech announced on December 17, 2014, about the normalization with Cuba, “I do not believe we can keep doing the same thing for over five decades and expect a different result” (Leogrande 473). After this event happened, some of the strategies that could be used to improve the policy are: promote a significant impetus in Congress in order to dissolve totally or partially the economy embargo, support the reincorporation of Cuban government to the International Financial Institutions membership, and encourage Congress to allow the Foreign Claims Settlement Commission to open again the claims programs in Cuba.

The embargo was put into effect on Cuba after Fidel Castro started nationalizing private American’s properties, leading to an economic warfare against the United States. President Kennedy made public in 1962 a full economy embargo toward Cuba. The purpose of the embargo was modified in 1993 and stated: ‘that it will not be lifted unless and until the government in Havana respects the “internationally accepted standards of human rights” and “democratic values”’ (Totten 31). Since the embargo was announced there have been several executives and legislative measures that have proved to strengthen or weaken the punishments regime. One of the most relevant was the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity (LIBERTAD) Act, which is known as the Helms-Burton Act. This act was signed by President Clinton on March 12, 1996, after the Cuban Air Force, under Fidel Castro authorization, collapsed two American airplanes and ended killing four people. “The Helms-Burton Act was created as a means to strengthen international sanctions against the Castro government in Cuba and to support a transition government leading to a democratically elected government in Cuba” (Eiselman 328). Moreover, this act not just remained the embargo as it was at that time if not it cut down the actions and the power of the executive brand to make it weaker unilaterally. As the Helms-Burton Act, there were several more acts such as the 1992 Cuba Democracy Act (CDA). In general, the embargo has been all this time a barr