On 8 June, the Wall Street Journal alleged that Cuba had agreed to host a Chinese spy base for surveillance operations against the US, citing an anonymous US government official. The story was dismissed by the Cuban and Chinese governments, as well as by spokespeople for the White House National Security Council and the US defence department. Nonetheless on 4 July, the USS Pasadena, a US nuclear-powered submarine, docked at the Guantanamo Bay naval base, an area of Cuba illegally occupied by the United States military. This was officially condemned by the Cuban government as a violation of Cuba’s sovereignty. Then on 11 July, the Russian navy vessel Perekop, a Soviet-era training vessel, arrived in Havana for a four-day visit bearing humanitarian aid. The manoeuvring of great powers around Cuba has drawn comparisons to the Cold War, but the situation is different. WILL JONES reports.
Monroe doctrine
Articulated in 1823 by then-US President James Monroe, the Monroe Doctrine establishes that the Americas are the exclusive sphere of US influence, and intervention in the region by other colonial powers is a hostile act against the United States. This article of US imperialist supremacy, which was re-asserted during the Trump administration, still defines the US’s relations to Latin American and Caribbean states, and to potential rival imperialist powers.
Cuba’s right to develop independently of US imperialism is rejected by the US which has imposed a blockade on Cuba since 1961. The maintenance of this blockade by the US Biden administration throughout the Covid-19 pandemic has created intense hardship in Cuba. There are shortages of food, medicines and consumer goods. Economy Minister Alejandro Gil reported in May that between January and April 2023 there were only half the number of tourists compared to the same period in 2019. Tourism is a key source of foreign exchange, needed to purchase imports which Cuba still cannot produce domestically.
Shortage of fuel is an overarching challenge. Cuba consumes between 500 and 600 tonnes of petrol per day, but in April the Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel explained that less than 400 tonnes per day was available due to suppliers not fulfilling contracts. This deficit has resulted in sometimes days-long queues of drivers waiting to refuel. According to 2017 figures Cuba consumes around 145,000 barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil but produces 51,000 bpd (35%). Before 2015, when the US imposed crippling sanctions against Venezuela, the latter’s state oil company PDVSA shipped around 90,000 bpd of crude and fuel oil to Cuba, in exchange for Cuban medical staff working in Venezuela. Trump-era sanctions against tankers shipping this oil slashed imports to 55,000 bpd. Imports from Venezuela have still not fully recovered, reaching 76,000 bpd in March 2023.
In FRFI 279 we wrote, ‘The US blockade epitomises growing US isolation under [President] Trump, which is benefiting global rivals in the strategically important Caribbean… This is what Biden has in mind when he warns “Russia and China…should be on notice that Trump’s incompetence and neglect in Latin America and the Caribbean will end on Day One of my administration”’. Biden’s strategy of maintaining the blockade has only driven Cuba into further cooperation with countries that the US regards as enemies.
Trading with the enemy
From 2000 onwards, Cuba increased its trade and diplomatic ties with the Russian Federation. Cuba recognised Russia’s claim to the Crimean Peninsula following its annexation by Russia after the NATO- and EU-backed Euromaidan coup in Ukraine in 2014. Russia agreed to wipe out 90% of Cuba’s $35bn historic debt the same year. Following its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and the application of Western sanctions, Russia’s exports of oil to the EU plummeted from 50% of its total oil exports to just 8% a year later. Russia has had to find substitute markets including China, India and Turkey. This is the broader context for understanding the drive to increase trade and diplomatic relations between Cuba and Russia.
In 2022, Cuba’s bilateral trade with Russia was $451m, three times the figure in 2021; 90% of this increase was accounted for by the tripling of oil imports. When visiting Moscow in November 2022, Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel denounced sanctions against Russia and reiterated the Cuban government’s position on the invasion of Ukraine. This position, established on 26 February 2022, calls for a peaceful resolution which acknowledges that the war is a consequence of ‘US determination to continue NATO’s progressive expansion towards the Russian Federation’. Russia unveiled a statue honouring Cuban revolutionary Fidel Castro during Diaz-Canel’s visit.
High-level Russian officials have visited Cuba frequently since the beginning of 2023; Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov visited Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela in April. At the Cuba-Russia Business Economic Forum which took place in Havana in May, representatives of 52 Russian businesses and over 100 Cuban enterprises met to discuss a range of new business ties between the two states. Crucially, a deal for Russia to supply Cuba with 30,000 bpd of oil was signed; if fulfilled this has the potential to resolve a large part of Cuba’s fuel deficit. So far in 2023, Russia has delivered over $160m worth of oil to Cuba.
Russia announced that Cuba would offer its businesses 30-year leases on Cuban land in usufruct and plans to open a marketplace in Havana for the sale of Russian consumer goods. Russia will collaborate in the rejuvenation of the beach community of Tarara as a tourist destination and announced the resumption of regular flights which were suspended following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Cuban Deputy Foreign Minister Gerardo Peñalver described the two countries as ‘strategic allies’ cooperating against US sanctions.
Prior to the collapse of the socialist bloc in 1989-1991, of which Soviet Russia was the largest constituent state, up to 85% of Cuba’s trade and investment was from the socialist countries. The rapid revival of Cuba-Russia trade in recent years has prompted comparisons; for example, a CNN opinion piece by US academic Jeremy Suri titled ‘In tough times, Russia turns to a Cold War comrade’. However, as an imperialist power and ‘hostile brother’ of the US, the Russian Federation’s engagement with Cuba cannot be regarded in the same light as Cuba’s past relations of mutual assistance with other socialist countries. Russia’s capitalist ruling class expects returns on its investments in Cuba – oligarch Boris Titov, who led the Russian delegation at the Cuba-Russia business conference, expressed in an interview with Interfax his hope that the Cuban state would offer Russian businesses tax concessions and the right to hire and fire employees freely, which would mean overturning existing employment laws and rights of Cuban workers.
The challenge to US imperialism
Though the survival of the Cuban revolution after the collapse of the socialist bloc has necessitated building more links with capitalist countries through trade, investment and tourism, fundamental to the revolution has been Cuba’s continued socialist internationalism. With their services often provided for free or below world market rates, Cuban medical professionals have served in 165 countries protecting the health of populations that are underserved by capitalist health systems. Medical services are Cuba’s largest source of income and have been deliberately targeted by the US blockade. A proposed amendment to the US appropriation bill for 2024 by Mario Diaz-Balart, a right-wing Cuban American Congressman, would deny financial assistance to countries that accept Cuban medical services, and also increase funding to Cuban regime change programmes under the National Endowment for Democracy and USAID to $30m per agency. Diaz-Balart’s amendments also encourage ‘our European partners who want our help with Ukraine to support us in defending freedom and democracy in our hemisphere as well, particularly in Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua’.
It is therefore vital that Cuba is developing its relations with many countries besides Russia. The two partners which account for the largest quantities of bilateral trade for Cuba are China and the EU. In 2017, China-Cuba bilateral trade amounted to almost $2bn. The EU accounts for 20% of Cuba’s external trade (€2bn in 2022) and is the biggest source of foreign investment in Cuba. The recent conference of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) and EU saw Cuba score political victories in Europe and CELAC countries stood their ground against attempts to drive a wedge between them and Russia (see box). Additionally, on 15 July, Brazil’s president Luiz Inácio Lula Da Silva signed a law to resume the More Doctors Programme which was suspended by his far-right predecessor Jair Bolsonaro. Under the programme, which was started in 2013 by Lula’s ally Dilma Rousseff, Cuban medical staff assisted 113,590,000 patients, accounting for 80% of the doctors in the programme.
International solidarity is our most powerful weapon against imperialism. Socialists in other countries must support the Cuban revolution by fighting the blockade on all fronts; in a world where US hegemony is facing a growing challenge from rival powers, this means continuing to struggle against all attempts to undermine Cuba’s right to establish trade and diplomatic relations with any country it chooses.
FIGHT RACISM! FIGHT IMPERIALISM! 295 August/September 2023
