Por Eve Ottenberg
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Photograph Source: Michael Oswald – Public Domain |
Donald Trump’s barbaric blockade of Cuba began on January 29, and already China, Vietnam, Mexico and Russia have stepped up to help. Especially note Mexico, whose courageous president, Claudia Sheinbaum came under such great U.S. pressure that it looked like she might fold on sending oil to Cuba after Trump’s threats. She didn’t. The world recognizes this siege for the disgusting, unleashed gangsterism it is. Russia is preparing an oil lifeline to Cuba; indeed, “the Russian Embassy confirmed to Izvestia that…it is planning to send oil and petroleum products to Cuba in the near future as humanitarian aid.”
China is currently delivering 5000 sets of 2-kilowatt photovoltaic power generation equipment to Cuba as part of a bigger collaboration that saw it build 55 solar parks in 2025 and aiming to build 37 more in the next two years. Chinese/Cuban contracts include approximately 2.2 million solar panels, with over 43,000 panels usually used per park. How’s that for energy independence? Trump may have strangled shipments of Venezuelan oil to the island, but the Cuba/China team aims for 37 percent renewable energy island-wide by decade’s end. In 2023, only 1-2 percent of energy generation was solar.
As for Vietnam, whose socialist government recently revealed that it expects to be attacked militarily by the U.S. Empire and soon, it helps Cuba with wind and solar power and is the largest Asian investor in Cuba, cooperating in biotechnology, producing vaccines and pharmaceuticals, shipping rice, rice seeds, monetary donations, clothing, cosmetics, shoes, electronics, steel, cement and household products. The solidarity of small Global South nations like Vietnam and Mexico with blockaded Cuby is breathtaking, and it proves that the notion that the world will bend to the U.S. Empire’s will is arrant nonsense.
Meanwhile, on February 12, Drop Site News reported on a flotilla – much like the ones that have sailed to brutally blockaded Gaza – arranged by “an international coalition of activists, trade unionists and humanitarian groups.” This will set sail in March “with food, medicine and essential supplies to Cuba, seeking to break the intensifying U.S. siege of the island.” It’s called the Nuestra America Flotilla and was “inspired by the Global Sumud Flotilla to Gaza.” UK MP Jeremy Corbyn and former Barcelona mayor Ada Colau are among its prominent supporters. ‘“Last year we sailed to Gaza to challenge a blockade that was starving civilians. Today we are preparing to sail to Cuba for the same reason: break the siege, bring food and medicine,’ said organizer Daivd Adler.” (These organizers might want to consider sending another flotilla to Gaza, where Trump’s Board of Empire has done absolutely zilch to compel its attack dog Israel to supply aid and stop killing Palestinians.)
As of February 19, news was Trump wants to make a deal with Cuba and rabid Marco “Regime Change” Rubio was backing off. What sort of deal does el jefe have in mind? Only his inner circle of war criminals knows for sure, and they know better than to be talking. But the question answers itself: does Trump want negotiations a la double-cross-Iran talks of June 2025? Or does he want confabs like those currently on the Iranian menu – to buy time while he builds up air and naval assets in the region and, most importantly, rings war-instigator Israel with American air defense? (I don’t care how much air defense we give Israel, until someone can please tell me how you defend against not one but a barrage of hypersonic missiles, this is all just a lot of hooey.)
My guess is that with so many American military assets in the Persian Gulf (oops! Arabian Sea. Persian Gulf’s too close for comfort) Trump wants to buy time until the Iranian op’s over (and, unintended consequence – Israel’s wiped off the map) and he can relocate ships and F-35s to the Caribbean. But never look a gift horse in the mouth: Trump says he wants a deal, and Havana would be insane not to try to take him up on it. What that deal could be is an open question, but never underestimate Trump’s brazen nerve: He may well demand, in exchange for stopping the blockade, the end of Cuba’s communist governance, which has been in place and a U.S. target since the country’s 1959 revolution.
If Trump demands that, the way he recently demanded Iran commit suicide by dropping its existential ballistic missile program, he will get nowhere. True, Trump made that lunatic demand of Iran at the behest of Israel, which is correctly terrified not of Iran’s non-existent nuclear program, but of its hypersonic missiles. And in Havana’s favor, there is no Israel in the Caribbean, which is to say that Trump’s demands may be more rational. So what sort of deal will Trump insist on? Time will tell. But if it’s not utterly psychotic, a deal is better than a blockade.
For those wondering if Havana will manage not to teeter into the abyss and if Cuban president Miguel Diaz-Canel will remain in power, the answer is likely yes – more likely after Trump’s mid-February announcement that he wants a deal – though how much Havana will have to compromise on its principles is up for grabs. To get an idea of that, just look at the previous commie bullseye of Washington’s gangsterism – Venezuela. True, Trump got quite the media splash: he kidnapped president Nicolas Maduro and his wife and now has them in U.S. detention. But the socialist Venezuelan state did not collapse.
In fact, that state’s still quite afloat and the vice president, Delcy Rodriguez, is in charge – a woman whose father was tortured to death by the CIA and who thus, likely to white house shock, is no marshmallow. Maybe secretary of state Rubio forgot to check up on the Venezuelan vp’s family history. Maybe he thought she’d be in such wretched hysterics over Maduro’s kidnapping she’d just capitulate – whatever, Marco “Stamp Out Leftism” Rubio miscalculated. However, the white house claims it can ignore Rodriguez’s Chavista rhetoric and deal with her because she’s a pragmatist. Whether this is the true state of affairs or just Rubio making the best of a bad situation remains to be seen. But overall, it’s likely that the rotten U.S. foreign policy Rubio has supervised will tank any of his future presidential prospects. Because poll after U.S. poll shows voters don’t like these mad foreign adventures.
Havana now gets only a fraction of the 100,000 daily barrels of oil it needs. As Michael Smith noted in CounterPunch February 12, when Hugo Chavez was alive, Caracas shipped that 100,000 barrels to Havana daily. So Cuba is starving for oil. But, as Drop Site News reported February 9, Trump claimed to be in talks with Cuba – talks from which Rubio deliberately blocked him. That was before the February 19 story in Responsible Statecraft, headlined “Rubio Backing off Cuba Regime Change for His Own Political Good.”
Nothing like seeing high moral principles in action. Nothing like watching the fate of 10 million Cubans in the hands of a person ready to starve them to death if he thinks it will advance his political career. American politicians are nauseating. Their callous, petty calculations of political gain, in which whole peoples – Gazans, Cubans, Venezuelans – figure no more than so many insects to be swatted or ignored according to polls, are enough to make you vomit. Who freakin’ cares about Rubio’s political career? In any just world it would have ended decades ago. If by the grace of God it’s a casualty of this Cuba blockade fiasco, well then, at least one good thing will have come out of it.
Eve Ottenberg is a novelist and journalist. Her latest novel is Booby Prize. She can be reached at her website.
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