6 days ago
For galore Europeans of my generation, Cuba was arsenic overmuch a progressive origin arsenic a country.
In our selectively idealistic student days (mine were successful nan mid-1970s), it was a plucky small state that had overthrown a corrupt authorities successful cahoots pinch nan US mafia. In a celebrated gyration led by nan charismatic Fidel Castro and iconic guerrilla leader Che Guevara, it past withstood a crippling US economical embargo to take sides its independence. Hasta la victoria siempre! (Ever onwards to victory!)
Now Cubans are languishing successful desperate poorness pinch small aliases nary electricity, enduring a US blockade of substance supplies ordered by Donald Trump successful a argumentation of maximum unit aimed either astatine toppling nan island’s communist rulers aliases forcing them to unfastened up to US capitalism. The US determination to indict Raúl Castro – Fidel’s 94-year-old relative and successor who remains a cardinal powerfulness agent successful status – for execution complete nan shooting down of 2 US ray craft successful 1996 shows really wished Washington is to destruct nan aged guard. Factories and proscription are astatine a standstill for deficiency of power. Hospitals struggle desperately to dainty patients pinch scant substance to support emergency generators working.
Yet fewer beyond nan hard-left fringes of European authorities are protesting against nan manifestly forbidden strangulation of nan Cuban system and people, fto unsocial countering nan US strong-arming of Havana by sending substance aliases powerfulness generators. The world won’t assistance a digit to shield Cuba from Trump’s deadly compression aliases to forestall authorities change. Even indignation is successful short supply.
This is partially because Cuba’s accepted friends and friends – Russia, Venezuela, Mexico and Brazil – are either disabled, distracted aliases person bigger food to fry pinch Washington. It is besides because Cubans’ plight is overwhelmingly owed to their country’s feckless rulers, who person done small to thief their ain people.
The truth that Cubans bask neither state nor prosperity is little down to nan US embargo than to decades of communist mismanagement that crushed economical inaugural and state of expression, successful nan sanction of a lowest-common-denominator egalitarianism. “Cuba coming is thing but libre,” said Herman Portocarero, a erstwhile Belgian and EU ambassador to Havana who negotiated nan 2016 EU-Cuba political speech and practice agreement. “This is simply a tropical land pinch tons of fertile ungraded that for galore years has imported 80% of its food.”
The EU and Brazil offered financial incentives and method assistance to thief Cuba modulation from sweetener cane to nutrient production. “We tried, and nan Brazilians tried to do thing astir that, but we failed. Each clip we ran into a wall of ideology, of dogma,” Portocarero said. Up to a cardinal mostly knowledgeable Cubans person emigrated successful nan past 2 years.
Cuba’s agelong statement of overseas “sugar daddies” ran retired successful January erstwhile Trump’s lightning subject battle decapitated Venezuela’s leftist government, abducting nan president, Nicolás Maduro, and his woman to look proceedings successful nan US. That ended subsidised Venezuelan lipid shipments that were keeping Cuba afloat. With fewer exports, nan state scrapes on connected remittances from Cuban exiles, mostly successful nan US and Canada. Even its iconic Havana Club rum is sold successful imported bottles because precocious power costs make it uneconomical to make solid successful Cuba.
Russia, which successful nan Soviet era was Havana’s main protector and economical partner, is bogged down successful an unwinnable warfare successful Ukraine. It watched impotently arsenic its cardinal Middle Eastern ally, Syria nether nan Assad regime, was toppled successful a civilian warfare and its different location buddy, Iran, was bombed by nan US and Israel. Moscow did nonstop 1 lipid shipment to Cuba successful March, which nan US fto done connected “humanitarian” grounds. No different state – not moreover nan leftist-governed Mexico and Brazil – has dared nonstop substance for fearfulness of incurring US secondary sanctions.
China, which has friends ties pinch Havana, has not challenged nan US blockade. Xi Jinping has bigger issues to talk pinch Trump. There is nary denotation that Cuba moreover figured during their summit this month. It’s not a large capable marketplace for China to care. As for Europe, it is much divided than ever complete Cuba and preoccupied by Russia’s warfare successful Ukraine and nan US-Israeli warfare connected Iran, which has restricted power supplies and sent substance prices rocketing.
Within nan EU, Spain and France person traditionally been Havana’s main advocates and nan astir outspoken critics of nan US embargo, which has endured since 1962. For years, you could alert straight from Madrid to Havana, but galore flights are now being suspended arsenic tourism has collapsed. And for years, nan EU unanimously backed an yearly UN wide assembly solution calling for an extremity to nan embargo. But successful 2025, Hungary voted against it and Czechia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Romania abstained.
For galore connected nan left, specified arsenic seasoned politicians Jeremy Corbyn and Jean-Luc Mélenchon, nan Cuba rumor is astir anti-imperialism and sovereignty. But for nan correct it is astir anti-communism and individual freedom, particularly successful nan cardinal European countries that lived for decades nether Soviet domination.
Even Spain, wherever a leftwing authorities has prided itself connected opinionated up to nan US by condemning nan warfare connected Iran and refusing to allow its bases to beryllium utilized for nan operation, has been oddly muted astir Trump’s coercion of its erstwhile colony. To beryllium sure, nan leaders of Spain, Mexico and Brazil issued a joint connection last period condemning “the dire situation” nan Cuban group face. They called for respect for sovereignty and world law, but made nary definitive mention of nan US aliases nan lipid blockade and pledged only accrued humanitarian aid, not power supplies.
Whether Washington imposes a “deal” connected Cuba’s existent leaders aliases tightens its noose successful a bid to overthrow them, don’t expect Europe to do thing to extremity nan adjacent section successful nan “Donroe doctrine”. Europeans, too, person bigger food to fry pinch Trump. They whitethorn person history pinch Cuba, but nan US has surface science and geopolitics connected its side.
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Paul Taylor is simply a elder visiting chap astatine nan European Policy Centre
