Why does the US still have sanctions on them anyway? The missile crisis was 50 years ago. It's time to forgive.
Florida is important in Presidential elections.
US elections are structured such that dumb stuff like a relatively small—but loud—and also hopeless interest in a single US state can influence policy and make a whole bunch more lives worse for no good reason.
AFAIK that’s basically the story.
We have sanctions on Cuba for the same reason we have sanctions on Russia and Venezuela now- we don't want to fund what their government is doing, and allying with them gives us little to nothing in return.
That said, it's pretty obvious that economic sanctions aren't bringing about regime change. I don't think anyone has the stomach for putting boots on the ground, though.
Seems more likely sanctions would cause a steady state where the sanctioned country is some n months/years behind where it would otherwise be, speaking as a complete geopolitical layman anyway.
On the flip side, you have China, where US pretty much helped build up their economy and hoped for a peaceful and democratic outcome. How well did that go?
and yet US is spending taxpayer money to defend Ukraine.
"So?
I'd rather live in the modern day, "unequally" with the rich, than starve or die of disease equally with the rich of the middle ages.
Just because the rich have 100Xed in quality of life over the last century, doesn't negate the fact that the poor have 10Xed in quality of life.
Making everyone equal is easy. Just make them all equally dead, starving, or miserable, just like they were in past centuries."
Shows a lack of historical knowledge. If all were so miserable, how did they built the greatest civilization, Christendom? Did Newton or Leibniz starve to death? The picture you are drawing here of past centuries is ahistorical and completely disregards the unbelievable quality of art and architecture that was possible during times where people were, according to you, "dead, starving, or miserable". (As if they aren't today.)
I don't want to live at all. I would kill myself immediately did I not fear God, Christ, and eternal damnation.
Thats the point. They are taking nothing but losses. All for some land that is now worthless after the war.
Oh they are absolutely have motivations against their own people dieing in the hundreds of thousands and they have motivations against them losing significant military assets and having massive amounts of economic damages.
Those are normal motivations they every county has.
That's why the best way to get them to change behavior is to "motivate" them with those consequences.
Current analysis is that Russia has maybe another year and a half left in their war before it ends due to these "motivational factors".
Still a ways to go, but manageable.
Those machines are not fit for a war with China, which is our current fear, and have to be replaced anyway. It literally costs obscene amounts of money to scrap and disarm them, but it turns out it's very cheap to let them save a few Ukrainian lives.
Nearly every dollar "spent" for Ukraine was either spent in the 80s military build up or is loaned to Ukraine so they can purchase our stuff.
The Russia/USSR transition is more akin to that of the Roman Republic to the Principate/Dominate. Or the different stages of other closely related empires throughout history after dealing with internal regime, partial reversals and so forth.
Even Putin sees Russia/USSR as parts of a organic historic continuum, and this is a key component of his rhetoric. That the USSR's territorial losses are Russia's losses and must be reversed if Russia it to "save face" and so on.
USSR was a necessary collaborator in this invasion.
Recent events have shown that to be very much not the case. Over the past few weeks we've had news of the Russian Navy paying port calls and the Chinese building major signals intelligence capabilities. Wouldn't it be better to have them as an ally?
It's always interesting to contrast our relationships with Cuba vs Vietnam. We fought a long hot war with Vietnam yet today we have good relations with them. Obviously we can't say we would have a good relationship with Cuba if we had been nicer to them but it certainly makes me think.
I strongly suspect the possibility of normalizing relations while the Castros held power would have been impossible.
I had actually expected some progress on this front after they got new blood in a few years ago, but he's much the same, and given their relations with other sanctioned countries like North Korea, and calling Israel a terrorist state, I don't really see much desire for change from either side.
Many senior government officials over the years, including then Vice President Cheney, have plainly said that our interest in Venezuela is their oil. The sanctions, as in any country, are about wanting control over their resources.
What is their government doing that is so terrible?
Anyway let's suppose Cuba is a brutal dictatorship, even though it really isn't by any metric. Why are there no sanctions on Saudi Arabia? Why no sanctions on Taiwan during the white terror? Why no sanctions on Chile when they threw alive protesters from flying helicopters? I could go on for a while.
Surviving while Communist.
The thing is that people would get killed for disagreeing even under Batista. If your family was happy with Batista then I don't think they were in a clean line of business.
Now let's try practicing some empathy: How would you feel if I just took that from you?
Other than the revolutionary war from 1776 to 1785, the other break we had was from 1812-1815 during the War of 1812.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom%E2%80%93United_...
It’s a tale as old as time!
The bright side is, despite the suffering involved, moving to America is the greatest thing that could have happened to my family.
Russians were more aligned with usa tho...
2. As for Bulgaria...not deporting Jews to their death for one small period of time != lack of antisemitism in the past few hundred years.
According to the USHMM,[1] Bulgaria's actions in World War Two included:
Instituting laws that, among other things, forbid Jews from marrying non-Jews and restricted where Jews could live and what jobs they could have.
Deporting Jews who were not in Bulgaria pre-war (its borders expanded) to their deaths.
Sending Jews to slave labor camps. [1]https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/bulgaria
So, no, Bulgaria was antisemitic in the past few hundred years.
Most of the examples of antisemitic repression in Poland took place during the post-partition era in the 19th century, when Poland was ruled by Russia, and Poles themselves faced similar repression by the Russian authorities.
It is actually interesting, a state converting to single-party rule significantly reduces the electoral leverage it has.
Obama won it in 2012.
That isn't that long ago in electoral cycles.
They should've learned from the French making sure there's nobody left to hold a grudge.
The comment pokes fun at people holding grudges for that long, on behalf of their ancestors, and at the whole situation in general. Ultimately is is meant to make people think whether demanding reparations from a less well-off people is really a better idea than just moving on. If everyone held grudges like that, no two people on earth would have good relations and we'd all sit in our little caves brooding over some slight our neighbor's ancestors inflicted on our family ten generations ago.
No, I'm not arguing for genocide. But thanks for the laugh.
I received a compensation 60 years after WW2, but it was few thousand euros (many generations have passed). And by the way it was the polish, not Ukrainian government that compensated us.
I can tell you, not just the US.
See: farmers having an absolute chokehold on the EU despite virtually everyone hating them, and them only being a tiny percentage of population, votes or GDP.
Essentially, it's because producing food doesn't give you the right to be pampered by everyone else and make economically bad decisions.
In Europe specifically, it would be in part because of the "tractor protests" where tractors were mass driven into city centers in protest, especially the Netherlands because they didn't like being restricted on nitrogen pollution. It would be especially irksome when you can get most peoples' votes for bad policy just by saying "support farmers, they grow your food." Except that all that nitrogen in the Netherlands goes to actually growing exported food ($$)...
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/nov/16/nitrogen...
And that still doesn't explain the continual drain happening, to this day, as is evidenced by this very article we're commenting on. What, are these 10% also filthy capitalists somehow?
As a Serb whose parents fled an eerily similar situation to Cuba's way back when for greener pastures to the literal other side of the planet, this thing where people blame the citizens rather than the worthless piece of shit government for fleeing these socialist hellholes is always an amusing one for me.
Are we sure and can be trust that this numbers are really correct?
Alternative hypothese: Maybe a part of this people "left the country" in 2022 by covid 19 and statistics were masked to avoid public embarrassment. I would not bet against it.
Most people fleeing Cuba blame current regime for their suffering with good reason. So they have a desire to see it overthrown.
Why does not the Communist regime in Cuba "open up"? Because they know the day Cuba becomes a multiparty state with elections -- they have to run out of the country. Both Cuban and Venezuelan elite along with many Caribbean states are active in Drug Dealings and Money Laundering.
Yes, the hawks in US have a role but they are not only active players, there are hawks in Cuba too.
Do something horrible to your neighbour - be surprised that he doesn't keep good behaviour torwards you.
Anyone who believes the US acts to punish evil authoritarians in defense of freedom and democracy is delusional. Look at our allies in the middle east.
Democrats took an L for freedom, prosperity and common sense and Republicans capitalized to win back the presidency.
bottom of the hn guidelines:
Japan declared war on the US. Didn't surrender when it became obvious they were going to lose and instead decided to inflict as many casualties on the as they could on the way down. So they got nuked.
> Why the US is keeping Israel as their toy?
The US inherited a lot of messes after WWII. Not really the US fault the Palestinians always make bad choices.
> Why the US entered the Vietnam war (hint: no, not to avoid the spread of communism)
Hint you are 100% self servingly wrong about that.
> US is the bad boy of this planet, just because they can
I've come to the opinion people that say this are upset that the US stands in the way of some nastiness they want to inflict on someone.