Time to Rebuild an Island
I was stationed in Cuba at GITMO for almost a year. Came back stateside every 4-5 months. I could not tell you much about the country itself. We did get people coming over the fence to escape. Not sure what happened to them.
I think it is about time we loosen up on this island. They are not much of a threat. The embargo plays out on the Cuban population mostly. Other countries are not looking kindly on the US embargo of Cuba.
There is not much more we can do to Cuba that has not been done over the years.
~~~~~~~~
Background: The US embargo against Cuba is one of the oldest and most stringent of all US sanctions regimes, prohibiting nearly all trade and financial transactions between the United States and Cuba since the early 1960s. After a brief loosening under Obama, sanctions were tightened and expanded under Trump — a policy the Biden administration has, for the most part, maintained.
The Cuban government has temporarily delayed implementing a planned fivefold increase in fuel prices, citing a cyberattack on its fuel marketing system. The price hike, part of a range of measures intended to curb inflation and help the economy weather its long-running economic crisis — driven in large part by the US economic embargo — is a source of considerable concern for Cuban civilians. NBC reports, everything from food to public transportation will be costlier under the plan. In spite of the delay, the plan will go into effect in the coming weeks.
Also this month, the African Union adopted a resolution condemning the US blockade of Cuba and specifically calling for the US to end the designation of Cuba as a State Sponsor of Terrorism (SSOT). Representative Jim McGovern (D-MA) and Senator Peter Welch (D-VT) also criticized the terrorism designation in a letter to the editor in the Wall Street Journal, stating:
“Wrongly labeling [Cuba] as a sponsor of international terrorism only furthers a broken status quo.”
Similarly, Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN) said:
“Trump put Cuba on the SSOT list simply to spite President Obama. It’s time to reverse it.”
And Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador reiterated his long-standing condemnation of the blockade:
“They [the US] want the people to suffer so the people rebel against their government . . . it is a great injustice.”
Finally, Congressional Progressive Caucus leaders Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) and Ilhan Omar (D-MN) are longtime critics of the embargo. They visited Cuba this month “to discuss human rights and the U.S.-Cuba bilateral relationship.”
It is time to rebuild an island.
CEPR Sanctions Watch February 2024, Center for Economic and Policy Research, Pedro Labayen Herrera and Michael Gallant.
Why change when our policies have worked so well for 60+ years?
Facetious, are we?
I think we need to rethink our policies towards many countries. The government of these countries don’t care and the people end up suffering. Then they show up at our border and create a whole new crisis.
The shame of gizmo, besides the torture…and imprisonment is a torture…is the sheercynicism of our Supreke Court declaring that Constitutional Rights don’t extend to offshore property we control… and, of course, that people who are not citizens are not people entitled to protection from human rights abuses by our government.
and i suppose the idea that people defending their own country are illegal combatants.
not too many refugees coming from Cuba these days. but a lot of those we welcomed when they were “fleeing communism” are now running our government. Batista being such a good role model and all.
did they teach classes in democracy at the School of the Americas?
Coberly:
What is too many or not too many?
After a precipitous increase throughout 2022, nationwide Customs and Border Protection (CBP) encounters with Cuban migrants peaked in December at 44,079. Historic levels of migration from the island—greater than the 1980 Mariel boatlift and 1994 rafter crisis combined—prompted the Biden administration to include Cubans in a new humanitarian parole program beginning January 2023 to “incentivize intending migrants to use a safe, orderly, and lawful means to access the United States.”
School of the Americas – Wikipedia
at Fort Benning (now Fort Moore), Georgia
Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), formerly known as the School of the Americas.
“not too many” is a figure of speech, not a preciseunit of measurement.
i could say that not too many means not more than we can deal with, but that would be pettifogging.
i was unaware of the..what looks like very recent [by my standards] increase (?) in immigration from cuba. thanks for letting me know.
i was more interested in the political contrast between mariel boatlift and “give me your poor…your huddled masses yearning to breathe free”
does this mean that we have finally broken the Cuban economy and freed ourselves from the threat of Commonism?
“It is time to rebuild an island.”
i think that might be a good idea. do they want us to do it? or just leave them alone? would we allow them to keep their own government?
related to this, perhaps, there was some talk quite a while ago about building factories in Mexico just over the border. supposed to be a big help to Mexicans looking for jobs (and Americans looking for cheap labor?). I haven’t heard much about it lately. What has come of it?
I had thought something like it might be a good wqy to absorb the wannabe immigrants coming from further south. But I also heard that what factories had been built were run more like prisons than most people would put up with if they had a choice.
Being a bit of a pollyanna I imagined a city that might grow free from games and government violence, seeded by American capital and initially governed by enlightened principles…hopefully locally grown, but in the spirit of MacArthur’s post war governing of Japan..but not like whatever it was we tried to do in Iraq.
please note the lack of “justification” here. I am dreaming, not asserting.
NAFTA Ten Years Later
Export Highlights
U.S. firms exported nearly $77.9 billion in motor vehicles and parts in 2002, including $43.9 billion to Canada and $15.3 billion to Mexico. Together, our NAFTA partners account for nearly 76% of total U.S. exports of motor vehicles and parts
NAFTA is officially gone. Here’s what has and hasn’t changed | CNN Politics
Overview of Mexico’s Automotive Manufacturing Industry
(as of about a year ago)
Dale:
There are quite a few of the automotive Tier manufacturers in Juarez and other places close to the border. Been in them and worked in them a week at a time. Not a dream, it is reality.
The ones I was in were not prison like. You did have to pass through a metal detector in and out. No weapons or stolen items like copper.
Bill
thanks for the info. is it enough? could it be expanded? would it help the immigration problem?
i agree with you and Joel (below). I think it didn’t happen because our “capitalists” are not interested in capitalism but in power. the success of a “communist” state (or a mixed communist/capitalist state would have threatened the triumph of predatory “capitalism” in America and the world. I don’t really know much about Castro, but he may have had power issues too.
I’ve long believed that the US made a mistake by isolating Cuba during the Castro regime. The US should have relied on capitalism and trade, rather than boycotts and military adventurism. Just as has happened in Poland, the GDR, the USSR, Vietnam and China, Castro’s socialist Cuba could not have withstood the pressure of capitalism and the socialist regime would have collapsed. Instead, Castro outlasted nine American presidents.
I’m not saying that Cuba should have returned to the corruption that marked the Batista regime that Castro overthrew, but it’s a shame the US didn’t just trust capitalism to do the heavy lifting.
Joel:
After a few years past the missile crisis, the US should have started to normalize relations. Such that it could be arms length and related to foods and agriculture. It makes no sense to starve a nation.
The US fed the regime.
@Bill,
I wonder if, had there been no Bay of Pigs, the missile crisis would even have happened at all.
But yes, US hostility only strengthened Castro and drove him into the arms of the USSR.
As I understood it, the Cuban missile crisis came about because the US had put medium range missiles (MRBMs) in Turkey, under the the Eisenhower administration, and the USSR decided to respond to that.
Wikipedia: In October 1959, the location of the third and final Jupiter MRBM squadron was settled when a government-to-government agreement was signed with Turkey. The U.S. and Turkey concluded an agreement to deploy one Jupiter squadron on NATO’s southern flank. One squadron totaling 15 missiles was deployed at five sites near İzmir, Turkey from 1961 to 1963, operated by USAF personnel, with the first flight of three Jupiter missiles turned over to the Türk Hava Kuvvetleri (Turkish Air Force) in late October 1962, but USAF personnel retaining control of nuclear warhead arming.
(Previously, Jupiter missiles were deployed in Italy & elsewhere.)
@Fred,
True, but incomplete. The rest of the story: at the time, Cuba was *an independent nation*, not part of the USSR. So the Soviet Union could not put missiles in Cuba without Cuban consent. If the US had not already made clear that it was an existential threat to Cuba, it is far from clear that Castro would have consented to such a provocation. But of course, we’ll never know.
Part of the 1960 presidential campaign conducted by JFK focused on the supposed ballistic missile gap, with the US evidently having way fewer such missiles than the Soviets.
Missile gap – Wikipedia
There was a lot of political theater going on between US & the USSR back when the Cold War was raging. Post WW2 stuff, when the Marxist-Leninists went back to being our rivals/enemy. With the rise of Mao over the Nationalists in China to aggravate things further.
The GOP insisted that Truman & the Dems ‘lost China’. Then the Dems in the Kennedy era insisted that WW2 hero Ike Eisenhower (who struggled with a decision whether to run for preident as a Dem or a GOPper) was ‘weak on defense’, if only to counter the GOP angle.
Back when neither side really had more than a handful of thermonuclear-tipped ICBMs, the Dems insisted that the USSR had dozens, and soon it would be hundreds, while the US had almost none. But there were a few medium range Jupiter missiles in Europe, and then in Turkey, and this of course made the USSR anxious. Watching failing test launches of US Atlas ICBMs on Huntley-Brinkley NBC news was practically a nightly event.
@Fred,
Yes, I’m quite familiar with Cold War history, having read dozens of books that cover the topic.
Maybe we could pay Puerto Rico to adopt Cuba? That could work!
So Trump could throw paper towels to the crowd in Havana?
Then United PR+Cuba could adopt Haiti!
When Castro overcame Batista, he was welcomed with approving crowds in New York as he attended the U.N. Something happened. I think it was called Eisenhower and Republican capitalists who had property in Cuba.
Jackd
i don’t know, but i am inclined to doubt “it was Eisenhower.” A bio I just read, “Ike In Love and War” by Richard Striner, suggests he was not like that. But if Castro had declared he was a communist, the political paranoia of the times might have forced his hand. note it was Kennedy who authorized Bay of Pigs and mobilized for nuclear war over the “missile crisis.” I was present in a room full of college students when Kennedy announced the crisis and was surprised that they unanimously supported “the President.” I was not so sure that risking nuclear war was the best way to address the problem.
Kennedy authorized the Bay of Pigs that had been fully planned under Eisenhower and was recommended to him by that administration. Castro did not claim to be a Communist until he had been isolated economically by the Eisenhower administration and was practically forced into the arms of the Russians.
I should add that the Eisenhower administration opposed Castro from the beginning of his movement against Batista. .