Why is there still an embargo against Cuba.
So this is coming from an Englishman so I may be missing some context an American might know. I have recently booked a holiday to Cuba and it got me thinking about why USA still has an embargo against Cuba when they deal with much worse countries than Cuba.
In: Economics
https://www.state.gov/reports/country-reports-on-terrorism-2019/cuba/
Most of the reasons are listed there. To sum them up:
1) Cuba provides military assistance to North Korea, Iran, and Syria by repairing and providing parts for Soviet era military equipment.
2) Cuba allows North Korea, Iran, and Syria to use its financial system to launder money.
3) Cuba continues to support various armed groups in South America by providing weapons and training, as well as sheltering their leadership in Cuba itself.
4) Cuba continues to harbor US criminals who fled there during the Cold War to avoid prison.
5) Cuba allows its territory and financial system to be used to help the Venezuelan Government traffic drugs to the US.
Its not mentioned in that State Department report, but this is also pretty important to understanding the US Government’s current position on Cuba:
In 2014 the US Government began normalizing relations with Cuba. The US Government’s theory is that, despite that, the Cuban government became an active participant in whatever resulted in employees at the US Embassy in Cuba developing Havana Syndrome. This occurred shortly after that normalization began.
Harming another country’s diplomats is always kind of a big deal and this is especially true when the diplomats that you harmed were trying to normalize relations with you.
Were it not for the Havana Syndrome incident, its likely that the US Government would have been willing to look the other way on some of the other stuff Cuba does – as the US does for many other countries that it has normal relations with. But post-Havana Syndrome, there is a 0% chance of any normalization in relations until there is significant and lasting change within the Cuban Government’s position on all of the other problems that the State Department has with it.
edit: and just to discuss Havana Syndrome a bit more – starting in 2016, diplomats at the US Embassy in Cuba began experiencing severe neurological symptoms. Nobody knows who did it or how, but there are a number of plausible explanations ranging from a malfunctioning “microphone” that used microwaves to try to listen through walls to deliberate poisoning.
What the US Government does know is that when they alerted Cuba to the problem, Cuba’s reaction was stereotypical of the type of reaction that the Soviet Union had when the Soviet Union was involved in something like this. That is to say, Cuba conducted a sham “investigation” that found nothing, then began demanding access to sensitive sites in the US Embassy and access to sensitive records concerning US personnel. Cuba also stonewalled the US on requests for access to basic information or non-sensitive sites.
Again, this is not an unfamiliar reaction to the US Government – the Soviet Government followed this exact playbook on a number of occasions when it would get caught doing something wrong. The fact that Cuba chose to react that way when confronted with the possibility that someone was targeting US Diplomats in Cuba basically cemented the idea in the US Government’s mind that the Cuban Government at least knew what was going on and had either outright facilitated it or done nothing to stop it.
You’re basically guaranteed to get implicated in something like this when your reaction to it is “well how can we know that the symptoms weren’t being caused by the sensitive data on your computers unless we’re allowed to look through them?”
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