Did I mention that the Biden Administration’s foreign policy is abysmal? I thought so. It’s always worth repeating, and the last couple of weeks have borne it out entirely.
On July 12, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken made a statement to the press regarding recent demonstrations in Cuba. Among some other boilerplate nonsense about our supposed commitment to human rights, Blinken told the press that the protesters “criticized Cuba’s authoritarian regime for failing to meet people’s most basic needs, including food and medicine,” chiding Cuba’s leaders that “peaceful protesters are not criminals”.
Okay, a couple of things. First, Cuba has been under sanction by the United States my entire life – sixty years – with the most punishing restrictions having been added during the Trump years. I’m not sure how well most Americans understand what these sanctions mean for a poor country like Cuba. They can’t do business with us, the regional hegemon, and other countries are threatened with retaliation if they trade with Cuba.
What this means, of course, is that food, medicine, and other goods are scarce. Now, I’m not claiming that the Cuban government is a model of efficiency, but I would say that any government that can maintain a standard of living exceeding that of its regional neighbors while under siege is doing something right.
Comparing like with like
I hate to keep bringing up Morning Joe, but when the protests began in Havana, the very next morning Joe Scarborough was sniping at the Cubans’ socialist “workers paradise”. “How’s that going?” snarked the former Florida congress member. Meanwhile in Colombia, massive protests against this capitalist banker’s paradise propped up by billions in U.S. aid were in their seventieth (and now eighty-fifth) day. That story didn’t make it onto the Morning Joe couch.
I know hypocrisy is kind of an impotent charge in this day and age, but honestly, the record of capitalist failure in Latin America is broad and deep. There is no lack of examples, no paucity of dumpster fires. I believe the Morning Joe crew commented on the “chaos” in Haiti the same day they cat-called Cuba, but of course when capitalist experiments fail abysmally, it’s always the fault of the populace.
Where’s the change?
What angers me most about this policy is that it doesn’t even reach the low standard of the Obama administration. Biden is literally leaving Trump’s extremist Cuba sanctions in place. He was in the government that decided at the eleventh hour to lessen tensions with Havana, and yet now he’s content with observing the new/old status quo.
Let’s face it – we have no standing to criticize Cuba on human rights, none at all. We support plenty of governments that abuse human rights on a far more horrific scale, including Colombia, Saudi Arabia, Egypt … the list goes on and freaking on. Did I expect better from them? No, of course not. But that’s no reason not to be pissed off.
luv u,
jp
