The Communists in Cuba have been a thorn in the side of the Americans and the broader West for the entirety of my life. I was born shortly after the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 when America found itself potentially threatened by the prospect of nuclear armed missiles being placed on the island of Cuba which is just a relatively short distance from US territory. The posturing and counterposturing of the two great superpowers of the time, the US and the Soviet Union, which sited the missiles in Cuba, brought the world closer to nuclear war than at any time since the start of the Cold War in the mid 1940’s.
Since the end of the five year Cuban Revolution in 1959 when the Communists led by Fidel Castro took over what was once a very US-friendly nation, Cuba has been at times an irritant to America and occasionally a threat. However if it has been bad for the US to have a Communist dictatorship on its doorstep the situation has been worse for Cubans themselves. They’ve been imprisoned in a corrupt, economically stunted, oppressive dictatorship for sixty five years and those who could escape from Cuba and make their way using dangerous sea routes to the USA have already done so. There is a reason why Cuban exiles in places like the US state of Florida are some of the most committed anti-Communists on the planet and that’s because they’ve suffered or seen their families suffer from Castro’s dictatorship. They’ve experienced the Communists confiscating private property and people’s businesses and had the truama of having friends and relatives killed or gaoled for standing up to the Communist state.
But could Cuba really be on its last legs? I hope and pray that this is the case and some of Donald Trump’s recent rhetoric suggests that after taking out the Communists in Venezuela that Cuba’s Communists could be next.
According to a report from the BBC, Mr Trump has threatened the Cuban Communists that if they don’t agree to a deal with the USA then Cuba would ‘face consequences’.
The BBC said:
Donald Trump has urged Cuba to "make a deal" or face consequences, warning that the flow of Venezuelan oil and money would now stop.
The US president has been turning his attention to Cuba since US forces seized Venezuela's leader Nicolás Maduro in a 3 January raid on its capital, Caracas.
Venezuela, a long-standing ally of Cuba, is believed to send around 35,000 barrels of oil a day to the island.
Cuba's foreign minister responded by saying his nation retained the right to import fuel "without interference", while its president said: "No one dictates what we do."
Cuba’s government might well be making bellicose noises about not being dictated to for internal consumption among the supporters in Cuba of the current Cuban Communist regime. With Russia a former strong supporter of Cuba enmeshed in the Ukraine war it is unlikely that Russia would ride to the rescue of Cuba in the event that the Trump Adminstration imposed consequences on the Cuban government. The Russians made some critical noises when Venezuela’s Communists were ousted but didn’t seem to do much more than that. The same situation might apply if the US puts the screws on Cuba.
Losing access to Venezuelan cash and oil might well hit the Cuban Communists hard and make the economic situaiton of the Cuban regime even worse than it is already. This will of course further penalise the ordinary Cuban and is something to be regretted. However it might help to crack open this long standing cancerous Communist Cuban nut in the Western hemisphere especially if economic and social problems caused by the lack of Venezuelan oil and money makes the price of revolting against their Communist overlords seem less onerous than just continuing to passively put up with their oppression.
Due to Mr Trump’s muscular foreign policy positions South America has lost one of its most brutal Communist dictatorships in Venezuela, which means that the Venezuelans are now going to be more free than they were before the US intervened there. Let us hope and pray that it is the turn of the Cubans to throw off, with American help, the shackles of the Communist horror that they’ve been stuck in for far far too long.
Link
BBC story on Trump and Cuba