Cuba’s Next as the American Anaconda Strangles Latin American Multipolarity

The Trump Administration’s targeting of Cuba is entirely predictable and intended to increase Color Revolution pressure on the Western Hemisphere’s historic resistance leader.

Cuban Context

The Trump Administration announced that it will break with its predecessors and no longer stop Americans from suing foreign companies that are connected to formerly private property that was nationalized after the 1959 Cuban Revolution, something that they were “legally” allowed to do through “Title III” of the 1996 “Helms-Burton Act” but which was suspended every year since its passing by Clinton, Bush, and Obama. The US will also drastically curtail the amount of remittances that can be sent to the island nation and crack down on so-called “non-family travel” to Cuba that had recently allowed many Americans to travel there since the Obama Administration’s “detente” with Havana and pump lots of much-needed dollars into its economy. The communist country is currently in the midst of a systemic transition that’s seeing it gradually open up to the global economy through the embrace of mild reforms under its new President, so the US’ Old Cold War-era enemy is very vulnerable to external destabilization measures during this sensitive time.

The “Troika Of Tyranny”

The US is “justifying” its moves on the basis that Cuban support has greatly contributed to Venezuela’s ability to thwart the rolling regime change operation against its democratically elected and legitimate government, which is factually true and a matter of pride for most Cubans and Venezuelans alike but which irks the US to no end. The military-intelligence wings of the Cuban “deep state” have extensive decades-long experience operating in the Western Hemisphere and have proven themselves invaluable in supporting their Bolivarian counterparts, which is why the US smeared those two countries and their Nicaraguan ALBA ally late last year as the so-called “Troika of Tyranny” that the Trump Administration clearly intends to overthrow. Venezuela is the obvious economic and demographic heavyweight and its fall would disastrously affect the Cuban economy that’s grown largely dependent on subsidized oil exports from its partner since the turn of the century, which is a self-interested reason on top of the self-evident ideological one for Havana to support Caracas.

Next On The Chopping Block

Cuba is clearly next as the American anaconda strangles Latin American multipolarity so it has no choice but to continue resisting however it can and by doing everything in its power to support its ALBA allies, especially Venezuela, but that’s also why the US is seeking to impose hefty costs upon it through its latest de-facto sanctions against the country. To explain, the lawsuit clause will allow Americans to sue Canadian, European, and other foreign companies that are supposedly connected to formerly private land that was nationalized after 1959, which can in turn trigger Washington into imposing “secondary sanctions” via the application of “extraterritorial jurisdiction” against those firms (which could also include prohibiting them from operating in the profitable US marketplace) if US courts find them “guilty”. This could expectedly lead to an exacerbation of the ongoing “trade war” and become part of the larger trans-Atlantic tensions between the US and EU.

From Sanctions To A Color Revolution?

In the long run, the US is betting that the foreign companies that might fall under victim to its “extraterritorial jurisdiction” in that scenario would either pay up or stop operating in Cuba, the latter of which could compound with the reduced remittance transfers to catalyze a serious economic crisis in the country precisely at its most vulnerable moment of gradual systemic transition. It should also be pointed out that Cubans, just like their Iranian counterparts, were filled with unrealistically high hopes during the Obama Administration’s “detente” and that Trump’s team is simply seeking to weaponize those false expectations in order to provoke Color Revolution unrest. As with Iranians, however, the Cuban people have a proud history of resistance and are unlikely to fall for this scheme en mass, though this strategic HybridWar threat nevertheless shouldn’t be downplayed, especially in the event that Venezuela falls and the (by-then likely former) Bolivarian Republic’s Petrocaribe subsidies to the island are cut off at the worst possible time.

Concluding Thoughts

There’s no doubt that Trump wants a communist scalp to show off to voters ahead of the heated 2020 elections, strategically betting that the Cubans and other Hispanics in the swing state of Florida and elsewhere would strongly support his reelection bid if his administration succeeded in carrying out a regime change against the island nation. Furthermore, taking down Cuba might be the key to taking down Venezuela as well, and vice-versa it can be argued, with Nicaragua being the last “geopolitical scrap” for Trump to easily take care of as he “cleans the table” and then gets to work selling “Fortress America” as his crowning foreign policy achievement that he’s sure will earn him a place in the history books for better or for worse. All told, the future of multipolarity in the Western Hemisphere looks increasingly dim, but the Hybrid War isn’t over just yet and anything can still happen, no matter how unexpected it might seem at this dark moment.


By Andrew Korybko
Source: Eurasia Future

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