UN Votes Overwhelmingly to Condemn US Embargo of Cuba
usnews.com
usnews.com
Also worth noting that US sanctions have a longtime exemption for American farmers to sell agricultural goods there
1. They forbid ships from docking at Cuba and then in the US (same as puerto rico)
2. They also forbid US companies from dealing with Cuba (worse impact than Puerto Rico)
I think the sanctions are far less of a big deal than detractors say: Cuba's overwhelming issues are its domestic issues. But, the sanctions aren't nothing, unless you think Jones act restrictions don't hurt Puerto Rico or that banning all US trade with Puerto Rico wouldn't hurt it.
"The vast majority of UK visitors to America enter through the Electronic System for Travel Authorisation – Esta. This is the swift, cheap and easy online permit. But the US government insists that any visit to Cuba since 1 March 2011 disqualifies British holidaymakers from the Esta scheme."[0]
My parents have been to Cuba, and to the USA, although their long-haul travelling days are behind them.
Q: What's the point of this policy?
[0] https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/cuba-vi...
One of the most interesting news I came across recently is that when Russia invaded Crimea, Biden had plans to arm Ukraine and requested them to fight Russians. https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/10/30/what-will-ukraine-do-wi...
Obama personally intervened and refused to arm Ukraine or launch an offensive.
Shows how morally different Obama and Biden are even though they are politically close.
It didn't though. None of that "general friendliness" ended up being a lever the US could use against China, Huawei, or Putin.
Biden I think is being more realistic here — the US builds soft power by being a reliable ally (when we commit) against a world full of active hostile powers. Not via nice words.
Still waiting for the US to provide evidence of WMD in Iraq. /s
Sorry, I can’t stand hypocrisy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WMD_conjecture_in_the_aftermat...
Right, very solid.
just a powerful peaceful ally threatening the world with world peace.
The problem is that the invasion of Iraq was an incompetent bloody shitshow. We had no reconstruction plan, we didn't make good local allies, we disassembled the state.
If we had quickly spun up a competent new plausibly democratic government without an insurgency, nobody would care whether or not we had found WMDs. 'Saddam was a dick, and now he's gone' would have been perfectly adequate, and our allies would have gladly come along for the next invasion in Myanmar or Iran or whoever the bad guy of the month was.
(but obviously, that's not the way history went)
Well, yes, if we had done something magical and impossible, that would have distracted attention.
But even if the war hadn’t been a war of aggression based on lies led by people devoted to corrupt interests which shaped not only the decision to go to war but also the conduct of the occupation, that was never going to happen.
But if it wasn’t for those corrupt influences, which definitely contributed to how bad things actually went, we wouldn’t have gone to war in the first place. The problems with the outcomes were not unrelated to the bad motivations for war, they were tied to a common source.
- If the war had gone well, nobody would care about the false claims.
- If we hadn't claimed there were WMDs, and the war had gone badly, there would be other reasons to dislike the war.
- If we had found chemical weapons, and the war had still gone badly, nobody would newly think the war was justified (everyone knew that Iraq at one point had chemical weapons, obviously).
Yes, but you also need to not support other dicks. Like, why are saudis bombing weddings in Yemen? And for how many years now? They still have Patriots “guarding” their airspace(yes, Iranian drones are dope). My point is, be consistent. If you’re a “world police” then don’t let anyone invade anyone else for any reason.
E.G. If Russia was to stop just there, what's the long term global risk vs if arming a nation opposed to a superpower resulting in WW-III? Where the calculus has changed today is that Ukraine was on the bright timeline path to being a de-fanged buffer state just like Russia supposedly wanted to maintain. Which was then invaded in an aggressive action to remove any such state in an action that would obviously push Russia's borders right against NATO, just as they'd always declared they didn't want right next to their country. They over-stepped, and this opened the moral high-ground for supplying weapons as well as their military blunders a practical and tactical position of two countries battling (risky but not a wildfire yet).
Even though UN resolutions are and always have been meaningless, they can still apply some pressure.
Fun fact: the UN created the International Criminal Court to prosecure war crimes, something the US vehemently opposed. The US under then-president George W. Bush, argued that such a court may lead to US servicemen being charged with war crimes. Of course the US has committed war crimes [1]. So Bush passed the Hage Invasion Act [2], which authorizes the US to invade the Netherlands if any US servicemen are brought up on war crimes at the ICC in The Hague (in the Netherlands, obviously).
The point is the US wouldn't do this if the UN could be completely ignored.
There are several major countries that have varying degrees of harsh long-standing sanctions at the behest of the US that are completely unjustifiable:
1. Cuba. Why? If you look beyond the "communism = bad" kneejerk reaction you come to the justification that Cuba nationalized assets of US citizens. That didn't stop the US seizing Afghan citizens' assets [3];
2. Venezuela. Why? Because Maduro started to or threatened to nationalize their oil industry. So the sanctions were really for the benefit of Chevron, Shell and Exxon. There's no principle here. The US had no problem with Chavez (who was awful). But again, "communism = bad";
3. Russia. This one makes sense. I mean the average citizens will bear the brunt of this but Russia started an unjustifiable war in Ukraine so what else can you do?
4. Iran.Why? After the US backed a coup of Iran's democratic government to install the US-allied Shah (again, communism and the Truman Doctrine comes into this), which pretty much sowed the seeds fo the 1979 fundamentalist revolution, which has been the government since. We've decided to pick sides with Saudi Arabia. Nevermind that Saudi Arabia funded and supported the 9/11 terrorists (and the madrasses that created them) and is currently engaging in a genocide in Yemen with US weapons. Sanctions seem to have the effect of solifying support for the regime (up until recently). Obama brokered a deal to end this. Trump blew it up essentially to appease Israel (and Biden has continued that policy).
4. North Korea. Does anyone stop and think why North Korea is really under heavy sanctions? "Because they're bad" is really the crux of this. The implicit assumption here is that US is "good", somehow by definition. That belief creates all sorts of problems.
Consider this: Cuba produces a lot of cane sugar. The US spends a lot of money on the corn lobby and corn (in the form of high-fructose corn syrup) is a common cane sugar substitute in the US and almost nowhere else in the developed world.
It's kinda weird how so many of these sanctions can be tied back to US economic and political interests rather than any form of principle.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_war_crimes
[2]: https://www.hrw.org/news/2002/08/03/us-hague-invasion-act-be...
[3]: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/14/us/politics/afghanistan-c...
First, it should be noted that the Kim regime is awful. There's really no question about that. Yes, nuclear non-proliferation was part of this, as were other so-called "weapons of mass destruction".
But the really unfortunate part of the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the toppling of Saddam Hussein (another former US ally I might add; this time against Iran) taught the world that the only thing that will protect you from US invasion is nuclear weapons. People said this at the time.
So while Kim Jong-un (and his predecessors) are awful. Can you really blame them for seeking nuclear weapons (and other WMDs) out of self-preservation?
Sanctions effectively allow China and Russia to control North Korea by deciding what trade North Korea can engage in. Both countries like this because they like having a buffer state with the US. South Korea is seen as a US client state. There is a large US military presence there so that's not completely unjustified. Again, we didn't learn this lesson with Ukraine but I digress.
Sanctions allow the regime to unite the people against a common enemy. Problems like starvation and poverty are blamed on this bogeyman. That propaganda is highly effective.
My personal view is you could probably restrict key military technologies from being traded with North Korea and the country could then be large ignored. This would probably have to be coupled with removing US forces from South Korea. Much like Ukraine, we could simply arm the South Koreans to defend themselves.
Think about it: you can take the sanctions and argue the US is starving you. If someone was starving you whether or not that can be justified why wouldn't you be hostile? The US is, as far as you're concerned, the abuser in this relationship.
I like to bring up the example of then UN ambassador and later Secretary of State Madeline Albright [1]:
> On May 12, 1996, then-ambassador Albright defended UN sanctions against Iraq on a 60 Minutes segment in which Lesley Stahl asked her, "We have heard that half a million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?" and Albright replied, "We think the price is worth it.
Now the "half a million" figure is probably exaggerated but even if it's "only" 50,000 the problem holds. Sanctions kill people, children included.
Why would or should we expect to those suffering under sanctions we created to not be hostile?
I disagree because I didn't make any value statement on the US. I did argue that the countries you listed have been historically antagonistic towards the US, so that fact that this is reciprocated is quite understandable.
The countries in questions have a been quite antagonistic towards the US and this antagonism has been reciprocated. That is perfectly understandable.
Your argument is that this antagonism is justified because "the US started it" or maybe "the US deserves it" ... I'm not so sure about that.
This seems to be the way the world works. It's not a principle thing, and this is why any free citizen should always be allowed to question official narratives.
I don't know if knowing the truth is any better though. The people will only get behind an invasion or embargo if they feel like it's a question of moral righteousness.
I think Russia initially used the same tactic of "Nazis in Ukraine"
Is ignorance bliss for the sake of the country? Should we not question the powers that be? Or should we always question them?
Pretty ironic how lack of access to capitalism can be such an important issue to a communist state.
And I would say let them have it - Cuba of today is a far lower humanitarian concern than a lot of currently unsanctioned trading partners, and far less than the China that Nixon opened up to the West.
But I think people need to be realistic that families of Cuban refugees form one of the largest block of swing voters in one of the largest US swing states. It's an unlikely thing to happen until Florida becomes a (fully) polarized state.
Lack of capitalism or lack of resources? One doesn't "import capitalism" after an embargo is lifted.
I don't agree with GPs framing though, as I think scale is important when comparing economic systems. You wouldn't want capitalism in your house, but it's the best thing at scale.
Interestingly, I think it's the best thing at low to mid-scale. Once it reaches our current scale, the externalities of profit-driven production cross various thresholds that plunge us into existential crises.
At-scale, we need some form of production that much more closely measures potential for externalities and allows assigning direct costs to these. Prices are incapable of doing this directly, and the promise of the liberal state to reign in externalities is more and more clearly an empty promise.
> At-scale, we need some form of production that much more closely measures potential for externalities and allows assigning direct costs to these. Prices are incapable of doing this directly, and the promise of the liberal state to reign in externalities is more and more clearly an empty promise.
That's the role of money and taxes. You price the externalities. The reality is, every capitalist country is perfectly capable of reigning in externalities, the just don't, because we're playing a huge game where we try to maximize our living standards without killing ourselves. If we priced CO2, living wages, and plastic cleanup into our lives, it would be a huge set back to our daily lives.
Although, growing up my dad literally did a weekly auction for chores. Actually worked pretty well too, lol.
It's not though. As an example, North Korea's exports [0] in 2021 were around US$150M, down more than US$30Mi from the previous year. Their imports [1] were larger, at ~US$276Mi, about half the previous year's.
Cuba's exports [2] are much larger, just short of US$1Bi for 2021, and nearly US$8.5Bi imports. [3]
It's feasible to imagine that non-capitalist international trade would be of much higher volumes if it weren't for the embargos these countries suffer.
[0] https://tradingeconomics.com/north-korea/exports [1] https://tradingeconomics.com/north-korea/imports [2] https://tradingeconomics.com/cuba/exports [3] https://tradingeconomics.com/cuba/imports
Neither requires them to actually liberalize their economy, but they would certainly benefit from capitalism.
It seems ironic that Florida Cubans seem to want to continue the blockade. They must know that it's hurting their relatives back in Cuba. And if it's not effective, then why keep it in place? (effective in this case meaning something that leads to meaningful regime change in Cuba - The blockade has been in place for a long time and hasn't led to a change.)
It seems like a much better plan for changing Cuba would be to fully engage. Allow trade. Obama began down that path, but Trump stopped it and went back to the status quo. Obama was playing the long game (like he was with Iran) by engaging with Cuba knowing that eventually it would lead to change.
In other words, the vote was pointless.
UN member nations can do whatever they want.
I'd love to be wrong, but I can't think of a single instance where a UN vote did anything meaningful, ever.
They did whatever they wanted, just because they wanted to, and nobody could do a thing. They could fake evidences doing so, get caught, kill thousands, spend trillions, and destroy a country with no bad consequences whatsoever.
No blue helmet peace keepers was sent at any point to block the US soldiers path.