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- cross-posted to:
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A U.S. Navy submarine has arrived in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in a show of force as a fleet of Russian warships gather for planned military exercises in the Caribbean.
U.S. Southern Command said the USS Helena, a nuclear-powered fast attack submarine, pulled into the waters near the U.S. base in Cuba on Thursday, just a day after a Russian frigate, a nuclear-powered submarine, an oil tanker and a rescue tug crossed into Havana Bay after drills in the Atlantic Ocean.
The stop is part of a “routine port visit” as the submarine travels through Southern Command’s region, it said in a social media post.
Other U.S. ships also have been tracking and monitoring the Russian drills, which Pentagon officials say do not represent a threat to the United States.
As I said, the technicalities of why the US claims that their presence on Guantanamo Bay is rightful is irrelevant, the reason they still hold it is 100% their militarily and economically domination over Cuba (which the US keeps in place with their illegal blokkades), making it impossible for Cuba to have any negotiation power.
When the contract was made Cuba could not refuse it because the US had already occupied Cuba. A contract that is made with an army standing at your door to invade if you don’t sign it is not a legitimate contract. The US is a coloniser and Cuba is just one of the examples. Cuba got lucky though because they at least got some independence (albeit with constant interference of the US trying to spark a civil war).
Unfortunately, there are no agreements between nations that don’t involve the presence of armies. One of the byproducts of the US fighting Spain to kick them out of Cuba is that the US army is necessarily involved. The alternative was continued Spanish colonialism, not an independent Cuba.
Do you find the German or Japanese surrender treaties to be illegitimate because they were made at gunpoint?
The US could have left Cuba after the war was won, and they can even leave today. Implying that that’s not an option is crazy. Guantanamo Bay is currently used to undermine Cuban independence and enforce an illegal blockade that heavily impacts the lives of all Cuba’s citizens. Implying that that’s not a bad thing or that the US should not stop doing active harm to Cuba’s citizens in this way is pretty disgusting imo.
Starving a whole country because you don’t agree with its politics is monstrous behaviour.
I don’t think I implied that we couldn’t leave, or even that we shouldn’t. I said that Cuba’s not going to get us to leave by asserting that the agreement was never valid, because that’s just going to get the response of “yes it is”. For better or worse nations negotiate backed with weapons, and a power imbalance is inevitable.
It’s not even a matter of right or wrong, just reality. Few would argue that the Japanese constitution is illegitimate and that power should rightly devolve back to the Empire of Japan.
You have some misapprehensions about the embargo of Cuba. It’s sometimes called a blockade for rhetorical effect, but it’s not actually a blockade.
It’s not “enforced” from Guantanamo bay, it’s enforced by civil penalties levied by the Treasury department on US entities and their subsidiaries, and to a limited extent by the department of state through threats of potential trade or diplomatic consequences.
Cuba can and does trade with other nations, including US allies, and even the US. The harm the embargo does is via sharply limiting the availability of the lines of credit smaller nations rely on for continuing development of their infrastructure, not by literally preventing boats full of food from landing. Additional harm is done by denying them access to the largest convenient trading partner in the region for non-food, non-medical (embargo terms have excluded those items for decades) trades which further harms their economy by denying them a reliable cash influx their neighbors rely on, as well as making imports more expensive through sheer transport distance.
Justified or not, and regardless of poor negotiating position, refusal to engage in a dialogue is not helping Cuba’s position.
They have their own ideological motivations for refusing to engage. Even a tacit acknowledgement that maybe they shouldn’t have nationalized the assets of US companies without compensation would get them a lot of negotiation credit, and it costs them nothing, except for the ideological factors. The US doesn’t get much out of it, and $6 billion 1959 can be written off fairly easily for the PR win.
One side doesn’t need to budge, and the other one refuses, and they both have their reasons. I believe that was the point OP was going for.