[rdl]

It would be nice if there were a safe harbor for open source/educational/non-dual-use materials even to individuals in a sanction-restricted regime.

I doubt the Government of Cuba (the true target of the sanctions) would get material benefit from free courses for their populace. Certainly only the most indirect and limited military benefit.

Unfortunately, as far as I'm aware, the treasury and state restrictions aren't so specific. IANAL though, particularly not an export-compliance lawyer.

[vidarh]

These types of generic sanctions are not there for military purposes. They are there under the theory that they will be onerous enough to promote regime changes. Cuba is a good demonstration of how they don't work. On the contrary they create an excuse for these regimes for pretty much any domestic problem.

[xmonkee]

Yep. Surely an uneducated adversarial population is more dangerous in the long run than an educated and productive one? I cannot possibly fathom the intended outcome of this sanction. Keeping a few kids from doing programming courses is not going to help the US ever have friendly ties with them. And it's not like this is an issue about which the opposing govt will care enough about to change their policies.

[rdl]

Blocking classes like this is like 0.0001% of what the sanction is for. It's an unintended consequence of a blanket sanction.

The sanctions exist for two reasons: to directly prevent "enemy" nations from gaining weapons (or economic infrastructure) to use for bad purposes, and to put pressure on the foreign government (directly on members of the government, and indirectly through the population) to provoke change.

Sanctions which are directly targeted against weapons are pretty obvious -- don't sell chemical weapons to middle-eastern dictators with a history of gassing parts of their own population (oops, Iraq and Libya...).

Sanctions which are targeted to dual use technology, e.g. not selling advanced routing and firewall equipment to countries which are engaged in repression and murder of their own populace are more of a grey area (oops, Syria and I believe Libya...); selling to the government directly is generally out, but it's often ok to civilian businesses as long as you're able to document that it's not going to end up in the hands of the government.

General "punishment" economic sanctions are a lot more rare, and even then they generally try to weight them so the leadership is disproportionately affected (I believe the ruling cadre's favorite brands of cognac, etc. are embargoed to North Korea, which wouldn't affect normal people; regular food is not restricted.)

[ekianjo]

> Sanctions which are directly targeted against weapons are pretty obvious -- don't sell chemical weapons to middle-eastern dictators with a history of gassing parts of their own population (oops, Iraq and Libya...).

Interesting, wasn't the US an ally of Iraq in the past, and completely closed their eyes on the gassing of Iranian populations during the Iraq-Iran war, as well as the gassing of Kurds living in Iraq ? Should the US sanction themselves? :)

[phaer]

> Should the US sanction themselves? :)

They do, you can't export from the US to the US, can you? ;)

[caf]

All but six nations have ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention, so they shouldn't be producing or possessing chemical weapons, let alone selling them to anyone.

[dsuth]

Don't these bans typically have to do with things like exporting cryptographic softer or techniques? This is the first thing that popped into my head.

[venomsnake]

If you are smart enough everything is dual-use. Hobbyist quadcopter to surveillance mesh of quadcopters is not so far. But in this case it is just the low that is outdated and not real reasons. Kinda like with encryption in times past.

[coldcode]

The whole Cuban blockade is utterly pointless anyway and deserves to die. After all Germany killed 100,000+ Americans - now our friends. Japan also - now our buddies. China (via Korea) also mostly friends. Vietnam killed 52,000 - now favorite trading country. Etc. Etc. Cuba - no one from the US killed (other than stupid Bay Of Pigs) - not a friend. Why, other than a tiny loud minority of people in S. Florida? If we just opened Cuba and sent them Disney and GM, we'd change their government in a heartbeat. Dollars change everyone's government.

[rdl]

I agree that the Cuban blockade doesn't help and would ideally be ended; the problem is that Cuban-Americans are a powerful voting bloc and highly concentrated in a single swing state. Plus the policy has been around for a long time. The ideal would be to have some kind of fig leaf event in Cuba (change in leadership didn't seem to do it?) which everyone can use as a face-saving excuse to end the sanctions and normalize relations. Cuba remaining Communist in the way Vietnam is communist would be a great outcome for everyone. Cuba transitioning to some form of socialist-capitalist hybrid would be even better.

Arguably the fall of the USSR would have been an ideal time to end this, even with Cuba remaining communist. Certainly a healthy Castro stepping down would have been a major favor in the 1989-1992 period toward this. I wonder if there was any effort at the time.