JFFC (The extra F is for WTFF).
It’s a fair question to ask though, what we should do if Cuba’s government starts murdering its people (more than normal, I guess).
It seems unnecessarily cynical to look at it from the perspective of political calculus though.
To me, part of me would support the notion of supporting the people against a dictator, especially right off our shore… I tend to think we should have supported groups like the Kurds, or the people in Syria more, as well.
In the case of Cuba, there seems little downside to supporting the resistance, compared to situations like Syria where it could have drawn us into a major conflict with Russia.
I’ve not thought it all through, but at the same time, Castro’s regime has been terrible, and if they just start murdering their population for resisting their rule, I don’t think it’s good for the US to just look the other way and pretend it’s not happening. We should support democratic movements fighting against authoritarians, otherwise, who will?
Political calculus is cynical, but it’s a good way to determine what is an efficient use of resources, after you decide that the action is morally worth the cost in lives.
The moral part does come first to me.
There is a downside that you aren’t seeing- our own history in Latin America is one where any attempt to intervene would be seen as imperialism. As such, we cannot have a direct hand in the rebuilding of Cuba, and we’d need to make sure our own Cuban population doesn’t try to shock doctrine the place up like what happened in Ecuador after the coup there, and other countries where communist governments fell in the region historically.
No, there are two independent arguments going on here.
The first is that it is in the US national interest to invade Cuba and the benefits outweigh large costs in ‘blood’ and more, where a massacre is considered an ‘excuse’ to invade (not my words). The very idea of somehow ‘preserving democracy’ in the US by killing brown people is abhorrent to me and I felt the same in the early 2000s when Bush did it on a grand scale.
What you are talking about is a hypothetical situation where a nation could in theory earnestly attempt (whether misguided or not) to prevent further bloodshed from occurring by intervening in some way. That debate is applicable to many countries around the world today that may devolve into state-sanctioned or run violence, nothing particularly special about Cuba.
It’s the difference between the Iraq War and what Obama did in Libya.
This is a good overview of how Cuba got here from an economics perspective:
3 major factors, but here’s one I didn’t know about:
This brings us to the last major dysfunctional thing about the Cuban economy — the dual-currency system. For most of its history, Cuba had two currencies — one pegged to the dollar that was used for import and export, and one that was only spent domestically, whose value was much lower. As this excellent and well-sourced Twitter thread by @red_dilettante explains, the dual currency allowed Cuba to ration foreign exchange:
The second was Cuba’s decision in 2020 to end its dual-currency system in January 2021. It decided to do this in order to prepare to make its economy more open and dynamic (read: more capitalistic), but the timing was really bad, because it happened to coincide exactly with the third and biggest crisis: Covid.
Covid did a bunch of stuff that really hurt Cuba. First, it utterly smashed the tourism industry. Remember, tourism is Cuba’s most vibrant and efficient economic sector, and it’s also a huge source of foreign exchange. When it got destroyed by Covid, it hurt economic output dramatically and made it much harder to get foreign currency with which to import food. A Covid outbreak at a big sugar mill also further damaged the harvest, and Covid forced Cuba to spend more forex importing more medical supplies.
At the same time, Covid raised food prices in global markets by about 40%. That meant that even as Cuba’s economy was reeling and its foreign exchange was dwindling, it had to use more of its precious forex for food.
Black Lives Matter has weighed in, putting the blame squarely on US sanctions.
Their statement:
EDIT: Discourse didn’t display it properly so:
P.S. I wish there was some technology that would just allow people to post words instead of images of words, sigh.
I agree with most of it. I think we should be lift sanctions and I do think the sanctions are a cause for suffering in Cuba. I think the “underminding Cubans’ right to choose their own government” is pretty laughable, though.
I think it depends on when in time you choose. Certainly at the beginning the US was determined to undermine the rights of Cubans to choose their own government — by avidly supporting Batista’s military dictatorship — and everything since has flowed from that. It’s certainly true that the Castro regime is bad, but to some extent there was only a Castro regime because of our efforts to prevent anything remotely leftist in the Americas in the 50s and 60s.
The ones that did won’t be with us much longer, unfortunately.
And I absolutely agree with you, dreams of returning to Cuba was something old men used to talk about while sitting around playing dominoes forty years ago.
That’s a fair point, Scott. I was thinking more in terms of today when I read that.
I wonder how BLM puts out a statement? I thought it was an organization with no real leadership. So then who decides on what statement to put out and what stances to take?
(S)he who controls the Instagram controls the woooooooorld!
I just wonder what Cuba would have been like today with a process of engagement rather than isolation. If not in 1961, then at least following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of Soviet propping up the Cuban economy. Seems like that was a golden opportunity to influence the course of events with some humanitarian and economic investment and the end of embargo.
I think ending the sanctions (except maybe measures targeted at the government or the Castros) would have been the right thing to do anyway. But China is a big reminder that trade and prosperity do not equal liberalization.
China can get away with it because they have 1.6 billion people.
Cuba is a lot smaller, and in Miami’s backyard.
Hey, USA citizens.
Latinoamerica is not your “backyard”. Latinoamerica is lationamericans land. Not yours. What happens in latinoamerica is none of your bussines.
Seeing this thread reminds of me of left-leaning Japanese who try to explain why Imperial Japan was justified in trying to create the “Prosperity Sphere” since it was primarily defensive in nature.
GFTO with that nonsense.
why are you using the male-gendered term “latinoamerica”?
Latinoamerica is not USA backyard. Europe is not Russia backyard. Stop with that imperialist language.
This comment is not directed at Woole_horde at all. I had this feeling for a long time.
I would not be a problem if it where 1 dude on the internet with this way of thinking. It seems how a lot of people USA think, even today.
Seriusly, @Woole_horde is a cool guy. No ill towards him.
It’s totally laughable, because in the modern context, which is where this is actually taking place, a major reason that Cubans are protesting is because they live in an autocracy where they have no say in their own government.
The US doesn’t stop the Cuban people from choosing their own government.
The CUBAN GOVERNMENT stops the Cuban people from choosing their own government.