CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

This Has to Stop: The Criminal U.S. Blockade of Cuba

Map of Cuba from 1639 – Public Domain

He has blockaded Cuba, and now he’s expanded the sanctions. Donald “Uber-Capitalist” Trump is relentless in his war on this tiny nation of 11 million people, whose courage, solidarity and grit has inspired all ends of the global political spectrum, from Claudia Scheinbaum’s left-leaning Mexico to Vladimir Putin’s traditional-values-championing Russia. Fortunately, some of these onlookers have even been inspired to act. Moscow already broke the blockade by dispatching one enormous oil tanker to Havana and is sending another, while other nations have donated various necessities. Beijing has been especially generous with everything from rice to thousands of solar panels. It kinda invites the comparison between Trump and Ebeneezer Scrouge. Not a good look for a man obsessed with his appearance.

On May 1, Trump’s new sanctions took aim at “officials, entities…as well as people operating in Cuba’s energy, defense, mining and financial sectors,” reported Democracy Now! “Foreign banks and companies that do business with sanctioned Cuban entities could also be cut off from U.S. markets.” Never has the planet’s need for a new, non-U.S. financial architecture glared more apparently, because Washington wages relentless, endless economic war on any nation anywhere that refuses to bow to it. Though U.S. financial assaults on Cuba are not, unlike those on BRICS countries, liable to catapult the dollar into its grave as the world’s chief reserve currency, you can be sure China and Russia have taken note. It’s one more nail in the coffin of dollar supremacy, one more argument, come the next BRICS summit – and BRICS, by the way, speaks for 45 to 55 percent of the world’s population and holds 40 to 44 percent of the world’s purchasing power parity – for expanding the yuan as a reserve currency and, even, for BRICS creating its OWN currency.

In other words, American sanctions, which have already backfired spectacularly in certain corners........

© CounterPunch