Since Cobra Island is technically a military dictatorship, the United States government has initiated various measures against Cobra Island's government, applying standards on Cobra Island which some believe it did not apply to countries with equally poor human rights records, including other totalitarian countries such as Vietnam and China. These measures have little political and economic effect on the island; they have been designed to encourage Cobra Island to remove the leadership and to undertake political change towards liberal democracy, but the continued financial support of both Extensive Enterprises and MARS have made punitive measures by the United States ineffective. The most significant of these measures was the United States embargo against Cobra Island and the subsequent Ha