Joseph J. González is Affiliate Professor of International Research within the Division of Interdisciplinary Research at Appalachian State College and is at work on Dealing with the Solar: Cuba’s Problem to the American Empire, 1895-1917.
Graphic produced by Protection Intelligence Digest (2011) primarily based on 1962 intelligence estimates of the vary of Soviet missiles positioned on Cuba.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine dominates the information. So does the response of america and its Western allies, from additional sanctions and future escalations, to humanitarian assist, and deadly weapons.
An essential factor is lacking from this dialog—and that factor is Cuba.
This may occasionally appear odd to say. In any case, what might be extra irrelevant than an island museum of failed financial theories and Chilly Struggle defeats?
However Vladimir Putin doesn’t see issues that manner. The truth is, proof means that he considers Cuba a accomplice in difficult U.S. energy—simply as his Soviet predecessors did a technology.
Cuba gives Russia alternative
I’m a historian of Cuba—U.S. relations. And it appears to me that when once more circumstances are pushing Cuba and Russia into an alliance.
In the mean time, Putin faces an unenviable state of affairs: a stalled invasion, a decided Ukraine, a declining financial system, and a united West.
Mired in stalemate, Putin will quickly take into account methods to assault his principal adversary.
Ultimately, his eyes will land on Cuba.
Cuba is already a part of Putin’s worldview. For years, his authorities has expressed assist for Cuba’s wrestle with the U.S.
In 2016, Russia intelligence providers could have mounted “sonic assaults” in opposition to U.S. diplomats, which ruptured U.S.—Cuban relations, boosting Russia’s strategic targets in Latin America.
In December 2021, Putin’s deputy minister of overseas affairs, whereas visiting Cuba., speculated {that a} battle over Ukraine might provoke one other Cuban Missile Disaster.
And in February 2022, as Ukraine refused to accede to Putin’s calls for, the identical diplomat publicly mused concerning the chance of placing Russian troops in Cuba.
The Cuban authorities has not rejected these potentialities. As a substitute, it has spoken of a stronger “strategic partnership” with Russia, within the face of tighter U.S. sanctions and a sharp financial decline.
The Cuban authorities has additionally refused to sentence Russia for the invasion of Ukraine.
Allies within the Chilly Struggle
This alliance ought to come as no shock.
In the course of the Chilly Struggle, Russia and Cuba allied themselves as carefully as two nations might.
The Soviet Union sponsored the Cuban financial system with billions every year, whereas offering weapons for his or her armed forces.
In return, Cuba supported Soviet overseas coverage targets not solely all through Latin America, but additionally the world.
In 1968, for instance, Fidel Castro supported the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia; in 1980, he did the identical for the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
Solely the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 ended their alliance.
Three a long time later, Cuba and Russia as soon as once more have the identical enemy: The US.
With Cuba’s permission, Putin might take a web page from his Soviet predecessors, stationing navy items on Cuban soil and in Cuban waters, and establishing alerts intelligence amenities.
Russians could have already reactivated a listening outpost west of Havana.
Most harmful of all, Putin’s authorities might comply with Khrushchev’s instance and station nuclear weapons in Cuba.
Putin rattled his nuclear saber final month. Is there a greater place than Cuba from which to proceed?
Decreasing Russia’s Affect
The U.S. authorities does possess quite a lot of instruments to counter Putin and safe Cuba’s neutrality at low price.
Contemplate remittances. Cuban People have despatched billions to their households in Cuba since 1977. In 2019, the Trump administration stopped remittances as a result of the Cuban navy profited from these transactions. The Biden administration continues this coverage.
Permitting remittances would ease Cuba’s financial state of affairs –and provides the Cuban authorities an incentive to maintain Putin at a distance.
So would rising the employees on the U.S. Embassy in Havana.
Barack Obama reopened the embassy in 2015. In 2017, nonetheless, President Trump all however closed the embassy in response to “sonic assaults.”
Added personnel would scale back the waitlist for immigration to the U.S., among the many highest on the planet.
Extra U.S. diplomats might additionally course of extra visas for Cubans wishing to go to the U.S., who would return with {dollars} for the Cuban financial system.
Venezuela gives one other alternative to ease tensions. Within the 2000s, below Hugo Chavez, Venezuela changed the Soviet Union as Cuba’s principal benefactor, offering oil at very diminished costs, ostensibly in trade for Cuban docs.
The quantity of the subsidy was, a Cuban economist informed me, about $4 billion yearly.
For the previous fifteen years, america authorities has imposed sanctions on Venezuela; the Trump administration made them far more extreme.
These sanctions have facilitated Venezuela’s financial crash and impaired its capacity to assist Cuba.
Elevated oil gross sales, already contemplated, would ease Venezuela’s determined financial state of affairs and permit its authorities to offer extra subsidies to Cuba, at the moment at about $ 1.2 {dollars}.
It could additionally give the Venezuelan authorities a motive to disregard Putin’s overtures.
A Totally different Cuban-Russian Alliance
In some methods, this second in world politics appears paying homage to the Chilly Struggle.
However it is usually very completely different.
Russia is unlikely to forge an in depth alliance with Cuba. The pursuits of the Putin authorities lie in Europe, not in world revolution.
Nor are the Cuban folks essentially anti-American. Sure, older Cubans could bear in mind the glories of Fidel Castro, however youthful Cubans need extra freedom, extra prosperity, and nearer ties to the U.S.
They’re additionally more and more prepared to make their unhappiness recognized to Cuban authorities.
America’s position has additionally modified. Having loved world hegemony since 1991, U.S. policymakers now face a world wherein smaller states, like Cuba, can affect occasions.
How will U.S. policymakers reply to this new context? With new insurance policies or conventional positions?
For the second, that continues to be unclear to America’s allies and adversaries, even perhaps to American policymakers.
However an unstable world would require solutions—most likely sooner reasonably than later.
