GT+Levin-Suri

Text: The United States federal government should normalize trade relations with Cuba.

Maduro has cemented the Cuba-Venezuela Alliance.
Venezuela's new president visited Cuba on Saturday and signed up for a slew of joint AND Maduro promised $2 million in funds for development projects, said Reuters.
 * Deasy 13**– GlobalPost breaking news writer (Kristin Dasy, “Venezuela’s maduro cozies up to Cuba” Globalpost.com, April 28 2013, http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/americas/venezuela/130428/venezuelas-maduro-cozies-cuba) MR

US engagement with Cuba is key to relations.
These new circumstances offer President Obama a rare opportunity to turn the page of history AND . The reforms also offer new opportunities for U.S. engagement.
 * Piccone 13** - senior fellow and deputy director for Foreign Policy at the Brookings Institution (Ted Piccone, “Time to Bet on Cuba,” Brookings, March 18 2013, []) MR

And, Cuba’s dependence on Iran is deepening.
Iran and Cuba have also been involved in their own fair share of bilateral agreements AND S. with Iran as one of its primary allies and trading partners.
 * Curtain 8**(Joseph W., “ECONOMIC AND SECURITY REASONS WHY THE U.S. SHOULD NORMALIZE RELATIONS WITH CUBA” Naval Postgraduate School, June 2008, http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a483591.pdf) MR

The embargo is solidifying the Cuba-Venezuela-Iran axis – threatens US stability.
If Chavez has a kindred political kindred spirit, it would be Iranian president Mahmoud AND to be a potentially volatile triangular threat to U.S. interests.
 * Curtain 8**(Joseph W., “ECONOMIC AND SECURITY REASONS WHY THE U.S. SHOULD NORMALIZE RELATIONS WITH CUBA” Naval Postgraduate School, June 2008, http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a483591.pdf) MR

The first impact is nuclear strikes – just 90 miles away.
The reason why the Iranian alliance with Venezuela and Cuba is so dangerous is that AND might no longer be old news and may very well become new news. Michael **Moran**, 8-20-**2010**; Foreign Affairs columnist for GlobalPost, covering global economics, politics and U.S. foreign policy from New York; Moran ran CFR.org, the website of the Council on Foreign Relations, Opinion: The war over war with Iran http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/middle-east/100820/iran-war-nuclear-proliferation-israel Yet U.S. military planners concluded long ago that Iran’s nuclear program has AND stay away from taking the final, fateful step – testing a weapon.
 * Curtain 8**(Joseph W., “ECONOMIC AND SECURITY REASONS WHY THE U.S. SHOULD NORMALIZE RELATIONS WITH CUBA” Naval Postgraduate School, June 2008, http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a483591.pdf) MR
 * Iran attacks kill global economy through oil shocks.**

Geoffrey Kemp, The East Moves West: India, China, and Asia’s Growing Presence in the Middle East, p. 233-4 The second scenario, called Mayhem and Chaos, is the opposite of the first AND expected, with dire consequences for two-thirds of the planet’s population.
 * Global economic shocks lead to Middle East proliferation, instability, collapse of democracy terrorism, war and extinction.**
 * Kemp 10** - Director of Regional Strategic Programs at The Nixon Center, served in the White House under Ronald Reagan, special assistant to the president for national security affairs and senior director for Near East and South Asian affairs on the National Security Council Staff, Former Director, Middle East Arms Control Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Second – the alliance leads to bioweapons production in Cuba.
For now, shipping between Iran, Cuba, and Venezuela could enable Iran to AND , the current order and policies in Cuba could also be at risk.
 * Johnson 12** – Senior Fellow and Director of the Americas Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (Stephen Johnson, “Iran’s Influence in the Americas” CSIS, March 2012, http://csis.org/files/publication/120312__Johnson_Iran'sInfluence_web.pdf) MR

Cuba has the capacity, tech, and motivation to develop bioweapons with Iran.
Cuba has also acquired the technology and the capacity to manufacture their own equipment. AND . Cuba’s biotechnology efforts have been very successful in the creation of vaccines.
 * Cereijo 12** – Professor at the College of Engineering and Design of Florida International University (Manuel Cereijo, “Cuba and Bioweapons: A Reality?” The Americano, March 16 2012, http://theamericano.com/2012/03/16/cuba-bioweapons-reality/) MR

The third impact is nuclear terrorism.
The concern is not necessarily that Venezuela will build its own nuclear bomb. What AND . security interests and to the security of several countries in Latin America.
 * Suchlicki 9** – Emilio Bacardi Moreau Distinguished Professor and director of the Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies at the University of Miami (Jaime Suchlicki, “The Cuba-Venezuela Challenge to Hemispheric Security: Implications for the United States” University of Miami Center for Hemispheric Policy, December 3, 2009, http://www6.miami.edu/hemispheric-policy/VenCubaSecurityChallenges.pdf) MR

And, that escalates to nuclear war.
Robert **Ayson,** Professor of Strategic Studies and Director of the Centre for Strategic Studies: New Zealand at the Victoria University of Wellington, **2010** (“After a Terrorist Nuclear Attack: Envisaging Catalytic Effects,” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, Volume 33, Issue 7, July, Available Online to Subscribing Institutions via InformaWorld) A terrorist nuclear attack, and even the use of nuclear weapons in response by AND for the terrorists. This might not help the chances of nuclear restraint.

Bioweapons and nuclear war are comparatively the worst impacts - cause extinction.
Of all the weapons of mass destruction, the genetically engineered biological weapons, many AND patriotism would extinguish humanity, then patriotism is the highest of all crimes.
 * Ochs, 2**– MA in Natural Resource Management from Rutgers University and Naturalist at Grand Teton National Park (Richard, “Biological Weapons Must be Abolished Immediately,” Jun 9, [])

Cuba’s economic instability is skyrocketing with the election of Maduro in Venezuela
At the same time, it became clear to any honest observer inside or outside AND countries such as China will no doubt increase economic engagement of the island.
 * French 13** (Anya Landau, editor of and a frequent contributor to The Havana Note, “Can Cuba Survive the Loss of Chavez,” 3/6/13, http://thehavananote.com/node/1067, MDM

Lifting the embargo is the key internal link to a successful transition of Cuba’s economy
Cuba under Raúl Castro has entered a new period of economic, social, and AND unwise to treat Cuba differently from its stated models, China and Vietnam.
 * Ashby 4/1** (Timothy, Senior Research Fellow at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, “Commentary: Preserving stability in Cuba after normalizing relations with the US,” 4/1/13, http://www.caribbeannewsnow.com/headline-Commentary%3A-Preserving-stability-in-Cuba-after-normalizing-relations-with-the-US-15197.html, MDM)

First – private sector and SOE trade
U.S. policy specifically supports “a market-oriented economic system” AND defeating, what could be a major U.S. policy goal.
 * Ashby 13 –** Senior Research Fellow at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs; served in the U.S. Commerce Department’s International Trade Administration as Director of the Office of Mexico and the Caribbean and as acting Deputy Assistant Secretary of Commerce for the Western Hemisphere; a counsel with the international law firm Dentons; he has PhD, JD and MBA degrees (Dr. Timothy, “Preserving Stability in Cuba After Normalizing Relations with the United States – The Importance of Trading with State-Owned Enterprises,” Council of Hemispheric Affairs, 3/29/13, http://www.coha.org/preserving-stability-in-cuba-timothy-ashby/)//Bwang

Second – US agriculture investments
EMBARGO MAY HELP REVIVE AMERICAN FARMS”, Drake Journal of Agricultural Law, pages 469-470) KD The Cuban economy is in terrible shape.132 Presently, “the Cuban economy AND ¶ have all begun to invest in Cuba and support its development.”144
 * Williams, 02** agricultural lawyer (Alexander Williams III, “MORE ASSISTANCE PLEASE: LIFTING THE CUBAN

Cuban collapse causes Latin American instability and terror attacks
Regardless of the succession, under the current U.S. policy, Cuba’s AND in an effort to facilitate a manageable transition to post-Castro Cuba?
 * Gorrell ‘5** (Tim, Lieutenant Colonel, “CUBA: THE NEXT UNANTICIPATED ANTICIPATED STRATEGIC CRISIS?” 3/18/5, [])

Now is key to a Cuban democratic transition
FOR most of our history, the United States assumed that its security was inextricably AND cooperating in matters of common concern would be reduced to a historical footnote.
 * White 13**(Robert, Op-ed contributor to the New York Times, “After Chávez, a Chance to Rethink Relations with Cuba,” 3/7/13, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/08/opinion/after-chavez-hope-for-good-neighbors-in-latin-america.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0, MDM)

The embargo has empirically failed to solve structural democracy problems in Cuba
February 2012 marked the 50th Anniversary of the US trade embargo against Cuba. President AND is a prime example of outdated and ineffective policy and should be ended.
 * Kentwired 12** (Kentwired, Kent State University peer-reviewed journal, “Guest column: Cuban Embargo has been 50 years of failure,” 3/12/12, http://kentwired.com/guest-column-cuban-embargo-has-been-50-years-of-failure, MDM)

Lifting the embargo key to democratization—existing reforms prove that they are open to transition.
In the last five years, the Cuban government has created an important institutional foundation AND would put the U.S. embargo against the island in jeopardy.
 * Lopez-Levy, 13**http://www.fpif.org/articles/a_post-castro_era_looms_for_cuba A Post-Castro Era Looms for Cuba By Arturo Lopez-Levy, April 17, 2013 Arturo Lopez-Levy is a PhD Candidate at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies of the University of Denver.//JH

Economic openness is the best way to encourage democracy—empirics prove
This paper flows from the traditional notion that it is in the interests of the AND over political activity and insists on the hegemony of the Cuban Communist Party. U.S. policy toward Cuba is at best static and at worst counterproductive AND effect on Floridians and Cuban Americans nationwide. It has in the past.
 * Feinberg, 11**http://www.brookings.edu/research/papers/2011/11/18-cuba-feinberg November 2011 Reaching Out: Cuba’s New Economy and the International Response By: Richard Feinberg Richard Feinberg is professor of international political economy at the Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies, University of California, San Diego. Feinberg served as special assistant to President Clinton and senior director of the National Security Council’s Office of Inter-American Affairs. He has held positions on the State Department's policy planning staff and worked as an international economist in the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of International Affairs.//JH
 * Cuba is key to broader Latin American democracy promotion**
 * Santons, 8** **– chairman of the Cuban American National Foundation (Jorge Mas, “How to Win the Cuban American Vote,” Washington Post, 25 October 2008,** [|http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2008-10-25/opinions/36910345_1_cuban-dissidents-travel-and-remittances-cuban-americans)//BI]

Lack of democracy leads to extinction
Diamond 95 Larry, Senior Fellow – Hoover Institution, Promoting Democracy in the 1990s, December, http://wwics.si.edu/subsites/ccpdc/pubs/di/1.htm OTHER THREATS This hardly exhausts the lists of threats to our security and well- AND which a new world order of international security and prosperity can be built.