This 12 months, like final 12 months, solely two international locations voted towards lifting the blockade: the US and Israel. However Argentina was meant to face shoulder-to-shoulder with them.
As soon as once more, the United Nations Common Meeting has overwhelmingly voted to sentence the US’ unlawful financial blockade of Cuba, now in its 62nd 12 months. In whole, 187 international locations voted in favour of lifting the blockage and simply two towards: the US and Israel. The one nation that abstained was Moldova, which has a pro-Western authorities that’s attempting to affix the EU.
Remainder of World vs US + Israel (+ Argentina, sort of)
This map, courtesy of Ben Norton’s Geopolitical and Financial system Report, gives an emphatic illustration of simply how remoted the US is on this challenge. It’s, fairly merely, the remainder of the world, together with long-standing US vassal states just like the EU, the UK, Japan, South Korea, Australia and Canada, towards Washington and Tel Aviv:
In a heated alternate with the State Division’s Matt Miller in yesterday’s press convention (see beneath), AP’s Matt Lee requested, “So at what level… are you guys going to comprehend that your entire world besides you and Israel thinks that the embargo is a extremely dangerous concept and must be stopped” — to which Miller responded: “Look, I believe we’re fairly clear on the opinion of different international locations all over the world. And it’s one with which we disagree…we make our personal coverage determinations.”
Drop Website’s Ryan Grim and AP’s Matt Lee pressed the State Division on the U.S.’s current UN vote to proceed its embargo on Cuba—a call opposed by 187 international locations, with solely the U.S. and Israel in favor:
Lee: “So the vote occurred at present within the UN on the Cuba embargo. You already know… pic.twitter.com/0kFSW9tZm3
— Drop Website (@DropSiteNews) October 30, 2024
Cuba has offered the non-binding decision, “Necessity of ending the financial, industrial and monetary embargo imposed by america of America towards Cuba” yearly (bar 2020) since 1992 — the 12 months the US prolonged the blockade to 3rd international locations. Annually, the decision passes nearly unanimously. Final 12 months, like this 12 months, the one two international locations that voted towards had been the US and Israel. The one notable distinction is that it was Ukraine, not Moldova, that abstained. This 12 months, Ukraine didn’t even vote.
One of many largest surprises on this 12 months’s non-binding decision was the inclusion of Argentina among the many 187 international locations that voted in favour of lifting the blockade. Argentina’s fake libertarian President, Javier Milei, has performed all the pieces he can to align his authorities’s overseas coverage with the US and Israel, even going as far as to apply to affix NATO in addition to provide to ship army gear to Ukraine and transfer Argentina’s embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. Certainly, this was the primary time since his arrival in workplace that Argentina has damaged with that alignment.
Initially, a few of Milei’s fiercest supporters within the media, similar to La Derecha Diario, argued that by voting in favour of free commerce and towards industrial blockades, Milei was staying true to his libertarian rules, which couldn’t have been farther from the reality. There’s additionally the truth that Argentina has all the time voted towards the US blockade of Cuba, even through the Mauricio Macri authorities, so this might have been a mere continuation of greater than three many years of bipartisan coverage. However that wasn’t true both.
Hours later, it emerged that Argentina’s International Minister Diana Mondino had, deliberately or not, voted the fallacious means, for which she was unceremoniously fired. As Ben Norton notes, “the vote was 187 vs 2… Milei wished it to be 186 vs 3” — thereby rendering Argentina simply as globally remoted because the US and Israel. Even the right-wing governments that Milei likes to affiliate himself with, similar to Orban’s Hungary, Meloni’s Italy, Noboa’s Ecuador, and Bukele’s El Salvador, voted in favour of lifting the blockade.
To justify Mondino’s dismissal, President Milei’s workplace mentioned Argentina was “categorically against the Cuban dictatorship” — simply because it was categorically against China’s “murderous” dictatorship… till the federal government desperately wanted Chinese language cash to maintain Argentina’s economic system semi-afloat. Now, unexpectedly, Communist China is, in Milei’s personal phrases, “a really attention-grabbing buying and selling accomplice”.
As we famous on the time Milei mentioned that, the truth that even Argentina’s fanatically anti-Communist authorities is now looking for to forge nearer financial ties with Beijing as investments start to dry up could have little doubt riled an excellent many individuals in Washington. Mondino’s assist for Cuba’s UNGA decision could have made issues even worse. For a rustic that’s alleged to be completely servile to Washington, Milei’s Argentina has a humorous means of exhibiting it.
A Becoming Substitute
Maybe to make amends, Milei appointed as Argentina’s new overseas minister, Gerardo Werthein, a member of Argentina’s plutocracy who till yesterday was Argentina’s ambassador to the US.
Werthein is a number one Jewish businessman who belongs to one of many richest households in Argentina. The household enterprise, Grupo Werthein, started life nearly 100 years in the past within the retail sector with gross sales of cattle, fruit, seeds, agrochemicals and fuels. Since then it has diversified to different sectors similar to media, power, actual property, healthcare and telecommunications. Grupo Werthein is at present one of many largest holding teams in Latin America, with branches all through the area in addition to in the UK and america.
Gerard Werthein left the household enterprise in 2019. For 12 years (2009-2021) he headed the Argentine Olympic Committee. Earlier than being appointed as ambassador to the US late final 12 months, it was revealed that Werthein had moved his tax residency outdoors of Argentina through the COVID-19 pandemic, a state of affairs he shortly rectified as a way to qualify for Argentina’s diplomatic corps.
Werthein was not solely a part of the entourage that accompanied then-president elect Milei to New York and Washington in December; he reportedly paid for the chartered jet that carried all of them there. Throughout that journey, Werthein, at that time with no official authorities place, was current throughout Milei’s lunch assembly with Invoice Clinton and Joe Biden’s consultant for Latin America, Chris Dodd, in addition to a gathering with Jake Sullivan and White Home Particular Advisor for Latin American Affairs, Juan González.
As Página 12 studies, Werthein additionally accompanied Milei on his go to to the Montefiore cemetery, the place they paid their respects on the tomb of Menachem Mendel Schneerson, also called “the Lubavitcher Rebbe”, the previous chief of the Chabad-Lubavitch, a department of Orthodox Judaism and one of many largest Hasidic dynasties.
62 Years of “Weaken[ing] the Financial Lifetime of Cuba”
In 1960, a US authorities memorandum spelled out the purpose of US coverage relating to Cuba: “to weaken the financial lifetime of Cuba . . . [to deny] cash and provides to Cuba, to lower financial and actual wages, to result in starvation, desperation and overthrow of presidency.”
It has labored like a nightmarish dream. Based on one estimate, the embargo has generated $125 billion of financial injury to the island. It has negatively impacted the procurement of meals, drugs, gas, electrical energy technology, transportation, and different primary providers for many years. It has additionally frozen Cuba out of programs of world commerce and commerce through Washington’s affect and management over worldwide banking and monetary networks.
As Ben Norton explains, it’s not simply that the US can’t commerce with the US, it’s that the US has minimize Cuba out of the US-dominated worldwide monetary system, disconnecting Cuban banks from the worldwide monetary messaging community, stopping Cuba from gaining access to overseas foreign money that it must pay for imports of issues like power and meals, and the US additionally threatens secondary sanctions on overseas governments and overseas firms that do enterprise with Cuba.”
In 2019, the blockade was additional intensified by Trump’s designation of Cuba as a “state sponsor of terrorism” and the imposition of 243 contemporary sanctions on the island. Since then, Cuba has suffered large issues sustaining its creaking infrastructure, together with its power grid. To what extent that is owed to the US blockade or the federal government’s personal failed insurance policies relies upon completely on whom you ask. Even the FT lately admitted that US sanctions have “severely aggravated Havana’s persistent late-payment issues and dried-up credit score strains.”
The pandemic additionally hit Cuba significantly badly. Whereas official homegrown statistics are onerous to come back by, the World Financial institution estimates that GDP fell by greater than 10% in 2020 and has recovered slowly since then, with out reaching pre-covid ranges. The pandemic decimated the nation’s revenue from tourism whereas a current sharp discount in shipments of oil from Venezuela, partially as a result of US sanctions imposed on each international locations, has exacerbated Cuba’s power disaster. The nation can also be affected by runaway inflation.
One factor is obvious: sustaining the blockade at a time when Cuba is struggling a crippling financial disaster and days-long power blackouts is just not going to enhance the US’ picture on the worldwide stage. Ongoing sanctions are solely going to additional immiserate the Cuban individuals whereas inflicting little, if any, ache to the nation’s political class. In his speech to the UNGA, Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla, Cuba’s Minister for International Affairs, defined how between October 18-23 Cuban households had no electrical energy, apart from possibly a number of hours.
“Many Cuban households lacked working water; hospitals labored underneath emergency circumstances, colleges and universities suspended their lessons; [and] companies interrupted their exercise.”
BRICS, Russia, China and Mexico
However Cuba is just not alone. Final week, it was amongst 13 nations invited to affix the BRICS as accomplice international locations. Whereas not granting full membership, the accomplice standing gives a possible pathway towards full membership for these international locations. In June, Russia pledged to assist Cuba restore its power system. Based on the Russian Ministry of Vitality, representatives of the 2 international locations “mentioned the prospects for cooperation” within the gas and power complicated of the most important of the Antilles in addition to cooperation within the building of power amenities.
Russian commerce with Cuba has elevated in recent times, helped alongside by US sanctions on each international locations in addition to the struggle in Ukraine. Russian naval flotillas have docked in Havana twice so fare this 12 months as a present of army energy. However deliveries of Russian oil, like deliveries of Venezuelan oil, have largely petered out.
China has additionally mentioned it can proceed to assist the Cuban individuals in standing towards overseas interference and the blockade. That mentioned, commerce between the 2 international locations has slumped in recent times, at the same time as commerce between China and Latin America has surged. Because the FT notes, “Cuba at present doesn’t even function amongst China’s top-tier allies in Latin America. Beijing has what it calls ‘complete strategic partnerships’ with Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru and Venezuela, all main commodity exporters, however not with Cuba.”
One nation that is considerably upping its assist of Cuba is Mexico, which has steadily strengthened its ties with Havana since Andrés Manuel López Obrador grew to become president in 2018. His authorities has signed quite a few agreements with the federal government in Havana to obtain a whole bunch of medical doctors from the Caribbean nation. Yesterday (Oct 31), López Obrador’s sucessor as head of state, Claudia Sheinbaum, confirmed that her authorities may even assist Cuba for humanitarian causes:
“Even when there may be criticism, we’re going to be in solidarity.”
Mexico’s state-owned oil firm, Petroleos de México (aka Pemex), has already dispatched 400,000 barrels of oil and completed gasoline and diesel to the island nation in just some days. Requested concerning the cargo, Sheinbaum mentioned that “Mexico produces 1.6 to 1.8 million barrels a day (…), so 400,000 barrels is just not even at some point’s manufacturing.”
Mexico, like Russia and Venezuela earlier than it, is turning into Cuba’s power lifeline. However whereas Russia and Venezuela are each, like Cuba itself, closely sanctioned by Washington and rely on schemes to avoid sanctions, Mexico is at present the US’ largest buying and selling accomplice. It stays to be seen how Washington will reply to Mexico’s rising assist of Cuba. As we’ve reported in current months, relations between the 2 North American neighbours are already strained following relentless US meddling in Mexico’s affairs.
