This article was originally published by William L. Anderson at The Mises Institute.
A recent Wall Street Journal article outlined yet another attempt by the U.S. Government to bring down Cuba’s socialist government, a process that has been going on without much success for the past 65 years. Once upon a time, the U.S. policy toward Cuba was part of the greater Cold War, and it was front and center in the national news cycle. (Many of us still remember the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, wondering if we were about to face all-out nuclear war.)
When Fidel Castro’s Cuban revolutionaries took over Cuba’s government in early 1959, ousting the U.S.-backed president Fulgencio Batista, many in this country cheered. Batista, after all, was seen as a corrupt dictator, and Castro was popular with many Americans who had high hopes that he would do a better job of governing Cuba. After Castro, however, seized and nationalized U.S. businesses, declared Cuba to be communist, and turned toward the Soviet Union for his support, the U.S. government has sought to overthrow him.
Unfortunately, the Trump administration’s latest efforts are making life almost unbearable for Cubans, who already are among the poorest people in the Western Hemisphere. (Before Castro’s revolution, Cuba was one of the wealthiest nations in the Americas.) The WSJ reports:
Daily life in Cuba is grinding to a halt under a U.S. campaign to block the island’s oil imports, drawing international criticism that the Trump administration is pushing the island toward a humanitarian crisis with no clear endgame.
The Caribbean island’s Communist authorities are rationing dwindling fuel supplies, curtailing public transportation and furloughing workers. Children are being sent home from school early, people can barely afford basic food like milk and chicken, and long lines have sprung up at gas stations.
While shortages and poverty have been a way of life for Cuba under communism, the latest crisis has Made in USA written all over it:
The swiftly deteriorating conditions in Cuba come after the Trump administration effectively set up an oil blockade last month. The last oil delivery to the country was a Jan. 9 shipment from Mexico, which has since halted supplies under U.S. pressure. Cuba has also lost crude deliveries from Venezuela since the U.S. raid on Jan. 3 that captured authoritarian leader Nicolás Maduro, ending all support for Cuba from its biggest backer.
President Trump’s executive order on Jan. 29 called Cuba “an unusual and extraordinary threat” and warned of new tariffs for any country that supplies oil to the island. The new measures go on top of a comprehensive set of U.S. sanctions on Cuba that began in the early 1960s when the Fidel Castro-led government nationalized U.S. property.
Lest anyone believe that Trump is trying to “save” Cubans from the clutches of the communist system, think again. This is yet another “regime change” effort from the city that has specialized in disastrous “regime change” wars and CIA initiatives for the past quarter century:
Trump has said the U.S. is “talking to Cuba” and argued that the island’s pain is avoidable. “It doesn’t have to be a humanitarian crisis,” he said last week. “I think they probably would come to us and want to make a deal.”
In recent weeks, the Trump administration has been searching for Cuban government insiders who can help push out the government by the year’s end, The Wall Street Journal has reported. Florida Republicans and other hard-liners have cheered the Trump administration’s crackdown. “Our Cuban-American community is eternally grateful for your decisive action against the regime,” Rep. Carlos Gimenez (R., Fla.), posted on X. “The end is near!”
Journalist Eric Margolis reminds his readers that the history of U.S.-Cuba relations has long featured the U.S. dominating its southern neighbor, and after the revolution, the U.S. Government attempted to overthrow Cuba’s communist government through an ill-planned invasion by Cuban exiles and numerous attempts to assassinate Castro. Writes Margolis:
The US sought to sabotage Cuba’s sugar-based economy, mounting an amazingly inept invasion in 1961. Cuba became a highly repressive communist regime, thanks to important help from the Soviet Union. Anti-Castro Cuban exiles in Florida kept up a half century effort to get Washington to continue efforts to overthrow the Castro regime.
While communist systems elsewhere fell like dominoes, beginning in the late 1980s, Cuba stubbornly kept its state-dominated economy, even as the standard of living deteriorated after Russia failed to continue subsidizing Cuba after the U.S.S.R. disappeared into political history. Because of aggressive U.S. policies, Cuba’s political leaders, beginning with Castro, were able to appeal to Cuban patriotism and keep the communist system in place.
Cuba as a medical paradise
Although U.S. government pressure has played a role in Cuba’s stubbornness of holding onto a failed system, American supporters of the revolution have also spread falsehoods about what they believe has been the superiority of communism over capitalism, especially in the areas of literacy and healthcare. Indeed, left-wing Americans have been supplying propaganda about Cuba since the late 1960s.
Michael Moore’s movie “Sicko” was outright propaganda, as Moore took three Americans to Cuba for healthcare treatments, telling the audience that they were getting the same level of free care that ordinary Cubans received. These Americans became ill after taking part in the rescue efforts at the World Trade Center following the 9/11 attacks, and they had lost their health insurance coverage. What Moore didn’t tell his viewers was that the care these Americans received was reserved for the Cuban political elite and for “medical tourists” who come to Cuba from abroad – and who pay hefty sums for their treatment.
When President Barack Obama visited Cuba in 2016, he lauded Cuba’s alleged medical and literacy advances. Unfortunately, he was repeating the myths we have been hearing for years. Despite the fact that numerous reports of the huge medical shortages in Cuba and the abysmal healthcare that ordinary citizens actually received, American elites, leftist activists, and the media have promoted this viewpoint.
Conclusion
But even though much of the hagiographic depiction we have had of Cuba from the American left is fraudulent, one doubts that Cuba would still have the communist system in place if it were not for the relentless pressure from the U.S. Government. Yes, communism has ruined Cuba’s economy and left the nation’s people in dire poverty.
And, yes, its vaunted medical system is a fraud, yet Cuba still has respect abroad because it has stood up to the blows against it committed by a paranoid U.S. Government. Cuba is no threat to the U.S., and the trade embargos, restrictions on U.S. citizens traveling to that country, and the numerous unsuccessful “regime change” attempts only prove how wrong U.S. policy has been.
While one hopes that one day Cuba will be a free country, if and when that day comes, it will not be due to anything Washington has done. In the meantime, the U.S. Government should end its criminal actions against Cuba and allow that nation once again to trade with its neighbors.
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