Through 14 presidential Republican and Democratic administrations, starting with Eisenhower, the U.S. has had a belligerent relationship with Cuba since Fidel Castro took power in 1959. Under President Obama, some relations thawed from 2009 through 2014, but that was quickly reversed by President Trump during his first term.
Cuba is now facing an existential threat from the Trump regime, more serious than at any time since the Kennedy administration’s support for the failed Bay of Pigs mercenary invasion in 1961. Trump, under what he calls a maximum pressure campaign, has tightened the U.S. embargo, blocked delivery of oil and cut off Cuba’s access to trade with dozens of other countries, with disastrous impacts on the Island’s energy, economy, and health care.
Between The Lines’ Melinda Tuhus spoke with William LeoGrande, professor of government and dean emeritus of the School of Public Affairs at American University in Washington, D.C. Here he discusses the history of U.S.–Cuba relations and the dire conditions faced by the Cuban people during this current crisis.
WILLIAM M. LEOGRANDE: Yeah, the situation in Cuba is really desperate economically. The Trump administration has imposed the most severe sanctions on the island of any president ever, all the way back to 1959. And the result is that the Cuban economy is just grinding to a halt. The two big things that Trump has done that have really hurt Cuba is first the oil blockade in which Trump coerced the Venezuelan government into ceasing all oil shipments to Cuba, and then threatened tariffs against any other country that dared to send oil to Cuba. Cuba only produces 40 percent of its own oil, so that means that the Cuban economy is operating on 40 percent of the energy that it would normally have and it can’t function that way. No modern economy could function that way. The other thing Trump has done is to impose or threaten to impose what are called secondary sanctions on foreign companies doing business with Cuba.
So for example, if you are a hotel company, a European hotel company, and you have a joint venture with Cuban hotel company to manage a Cuban hotel or to recruit tourists to go visit the Cuban hotel, now the Trump administration is saying, “Well, if you’re going to work with the Cuban company, then you’re not going to be able to do business in the United States.” And so when foreign companies have to choose between doing business in Cuba and doing business in the United States, it’s a no-brainer for them. They’re going to sacrifice their Cuban business before they’ll sacrifice their U.S. business.
MELINDA TUHUS: There have been a lot of criticisms of how the Cuban government has handled its own economy. And why the heck didn’t they transition like 30 years ago or 20 years ago to solar? I mean, what was going on with that? That just seems so obvious.
WILLIAM M. LEOGRANDE: A couple of reasons. Number one is that they were getting oil at highly subsidized prices from Venezuela. And number two, solar was a lot more expensive 10 years ago than it is today. They had a strategy to move toward 30 percent of renewables by the end of this decade, but now they’ve accelerated it dramatically.
MELINDA TUHUS: I don’t know if starvation is the right word, but there’s just tremendous impacts. And so can you talk a little bit about that?
WILLIAM M. LEOGRANDE: So the Trump administration claims that its sanctions are aimed at the Cuban government, not the Cuban people. But that’s really disingenuous. The kinds of sanctions that they’re imposing, which are aimed at cutting off oil shipments to Cuba and aimed at cutting off Cuba’s ability to earn foreign exchange currency, which it needs to import food, medicine, and fuel, those all have immediate impacts on the average Cuban. Today in Cuba, there’s no public transportation because there’s no fuel. The electricity is out 20 hours out of 24 in most places because there’s not enough oil and because the equipment keeps breaking down and they can’t buy spare parts. Hospitals are not able to conduct surgeries because the electricity is not reliable and they can’t get fuel for their generators. They can’t import medical equipment for lack of money or medicine that they don’t produce themselves for lack of money.
Schools are basically closed. Most factories are operating at a reduced schedule if they’re operating at all. And malnutrition is spreading on the island because Cuba has to import 70 percent of its food and it just doesn’t have the money to do it.
MELINDA TUHUS: The State Department came out with this paper basically making Cuba the center of the communist effort to overthrow the U.S. and has gone after a lot of groups in the U.S. who have shown solidarity with Cuba. A lot of people think this is absolutely absurd, but what possible impact do you think it might have on this whole situation?
WILLIAM M. LEOGRANDE: This report is essentially one big conspiracy theory in which Cuban intelligence is behind every bush and responsible for every progressive organization and movement in the United States since the 1960s. It could have been written by Joe McCarthy himself. I think it has two purposes. One is to continue the drumbeat of war to try to justify military intervention in Cuba. But the second objective of this is very much in line with the Republican’s emerging strategy for the midterm elections, which is to brand Democrats as communists.
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