Hacker News Reader

I'm not an American so not educated on this. Are the sanctions considered successful? What are their goals?

The sanctions are nothing most Americans ever think of, apart from maybe Cuban cigars being exotic or hard to procure - though I feel like that was more of a thing 30+ years ago.

The goal was Cuba was openly hostile to the US and so we swung our large economic …stick, around. They took our assets and then held nuclear missiles for the Soviet Union during the Cold War, essentially putting them incredibly close to our shores.

They’re lucky the US didn’t do more, frankly.

> held nuclear missiles for the Soviet Union during the Cold War, essentially putting them incredibly close to our shores.

I think those missiles were installed (at least partly) as a response to US deploying nuclear weapons in Turkey (and, to a lesser extent, Italy).

You are correct. That part is never said.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com