Cuba: “This is just the beginning”

Originally Joe Biden had planned to leave Cuba as Cuba for the time being. The US president has other foreign policy priorities, his main focus being on relations with China and Russia. But the recent protests in Cuba and the actions of the government there have now moved him to act. Late last week, Biden announced that the US was imposing sanctions on Cuban Defense Minister Alvaro Lopez Miera and a Home Office brigade known as the Black Berets.

With the sanctions, Biden is expressly reacting to the fact that the Cuban government is sometimes using force against the nationwide protests against social injustices. “This is just the beginning,” said Biden. “The United States will continue to impose sanctions on those responsible for the oppression of the Cuban people.”

The pressure on Biden to take action on Cuba had grown recently. Cubans in exile demonstrated in front of the White House in Washington and asked for help. The Republicans accused Biden of inaction, alleging that he was protecting the communists in Cuba. The Cuban Senator Marco Rubio from Florida demanded that the US should seek more international support for the demonstrators. It is also important to ensure that they have access to the Internet. The Cuban government is restricting this because many of the demonstrations are coordinated via social media.

The extremely conservative Fox News presenter Sean Hannity, influential in Republican circles, had moved his nightly show to Miami last week, where many Cubans in exile live. In the presidential elections last November, they voted in unexpectedly large numbers for Donald Trump.

Hannity devoted an entire program to the Cuba theme and asked, “What is the Biden Doctrine? Kissing every single dictator in the world?” That was an astonishing question in that Donald Trump, the predecessor of Biden, whom Hannity admired, had never made a secret of his predilection for dictators and autocrats.

The Cubans in exile in Florida are putting pressure on Biden

In Washington there is speculation that Biden has now also acted for domestic political reasons. The great support of the Cubans in exile in Florida for the Republicans had surprised the Democrats at the time. Since then, the party strategists have been thinking about how to win these voters back. Showing toughness towards the Cuban government is considered an effective means.

Biden did not go into this domestic political component. Rather, he emphasized that he was looking at the big picture. “Promoting human dignity and freedom is a top priority for my government,” he said. Foreign Minister Antony Blinken was a little more specific. “The actions of the Cuban security forces and the violent mobs organized by President Miguel Díaz-Canel show the regime’s fear of its own people,” he said. “We stand by all Cubans who want a government that respects human rights. “

The progressive wing of the Democrats, however, reacted unhappily to the government’s actions. It was hoped that Biden would at least partially withdraw the sanctions that Donald Trump imposed in 2017. Biden had promised that during the election campaign. Now he has chosen the opposite course.

The Russians send transport planes to the Caribbean

So while the US is trying to increase the pressure on Cuba’s leadership, Russia is trying to ease it again immediately. Two transport aircraft of the type Antonov-124 took off at the weekend from the Chkalovsky military airport near Moscow for the Caribbean. Russian television showed how trucks drove straight to the ramps of the freighters and soldiers loaded package after package into the huge cargo holds: 88 tons of relief supplies, including food, more than a million masks and other protective equipment. The Russian Defense Ministry said the instruction came directly from President Vladimir Putin.

Russia looks very carefully into the distance to Havana, and indeed – deeply suspicious of the US’s Cuba course. The spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Sakharova, warned Washington two weeks ago that Russia found “outside interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign state or other destructive actions destabilizing the situation on the island unacceptable”. She accused the USA of aiming for a colorful revolution in Cuba by creating social and economic problems with sanctions, provoking tensions and fueling the mood against the government.

For decades, Russia has traditionally had close ties with the communist Caribbean state and the Castro brothers, who ruled there for a long time. The stationing of Soviet missiles on the island nearly sparked a war between the two superpowers in the 1960s. Even since the end of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia has remained a kind of protecting power. For Russia, the aid deliveries over the weekend are just as much a sign to the USA as to Cuba.

Moscow’s close ties to Havana are illustrated by a letter from the Latin America department of the Russian Foreign Ministry. It was addressed to the newspaper with “extreme regret” Nesawissimaja Gazette. She had criticized statements by Cuba’s President Miguel Díaz-Canel, who had said that the US was behind the street protests in Cuba. The country would take advantage of Cuba’s “temporary problems” and the pandemic.

The columnist of the Nesawissimaja Gazette rated this statement as “not very convincing”. And this also applies to the statement that without the US sanctions, life in Cuba would be different. The director of the Latin America department wrote in his letter that the newspaper had “practically acted as an apologist for American sanctions policy”.