Will Cuba be Venezuela 2.0?
Like Lenin in Russia and Mao in China, Castro replaced a corrupt government when he came to power. Like Lenin and Mao, Castro replaced one form of totalitarianism with another. Unlike communism in the USSR and China, communism in Cuba has proven durable. Decades of US trade sanctions, subversion and assassination plots failed to dislodge the grip of the Castro family.
Partly, this is owing to subsidy by the USSR. But the USSR has been gone for 35 years and the Castro regime still stands.
I can’t help but wonder whether a better approach would have been for the US to encourage trade and tourism with Cuba, forcing the regime to explain to its people why they should eschew the bright shiny objects and opportunities of capitalism for the drab life under communism. The carrot instead of the stick. Trust capitalism and human nature.
Now, the Trump Administration is once again reaching for the stick.
“On Wednesday, federal prosecutors announced criminal charges against former Cuban president Raúl Castro for his alleged role in the 1996 shootdown of two civilian planes operated by a Miami-based exile group. The indictment marked a major escalation in the Trump administration’s increasingly aggressive posture toward Cuba’s socialist government.
“The move comes as Cuba faces deepening economic turmoil that has left many Cuban Americans in the Boston area anxiously trying to support relatives and friends still on the island. Across New England, members of the Cuban diaspora are grappling with how to separate the effects of decades of US sanctions from the Cuban government’s own political repression and economic mismanagement.”
The US indicted Maduro before kidnapping him. It looks to me like the Trump Administration, keen to distract from the Epstein files and the failed adventure in Iran, is setting the stage for what it regards as another quick political decapitation. While the Cuban government has taken on many of the sclerotic features of Soviet late-stage communism, it’s clear that Trump isn’t concerned about the Cuban people, only his political optics.
Trump threatens Cuba
Well Joel:
I guess I am the only one here who has been to Cuba.
I was based out of Guantanamo with 8th Marines. Spent my nine months there fixing the communication between the CP bunker and each post. Nothing exciting going on there. It was quiet duty for Corporal. I would get TAD pay consisting of a few dollars more per day. beer was 20 cents a can and shots were 25 cents which included a very small drip of soda in order to make it a mixed drink.
No, this is not like what the resident Cubans are experiencing. We did have some of the former plantation owners on the base. Others came over the fence. I do not see any reason for the US to invade Cuba, It is harmless to the US. There are no missiles in transit. Its weaponry is far less capable than the US. It is not a threat to the US other than Trump’s tough gut ego.
In time, it will correct the issue itself. It already went through revolutions and today is being starved by the US into submission by an overweight president who thinks the military are a bunch of “suckers” and described an American cemetery as being filled with “losers.” Cuba will change on its own without US disrupting it and telling it what to do.
As long as someone else does the dirty work, he will always place his tough guy hat.