On 14 January, then-outgoing US President Joe Biden announced he’d remove Cuba from the list of countries that Washington claims are ‘state sponsors of t*rrorism.’
However, before the ink of Biden’s signature could dry, US President Donald Trump reversed the decision as soon as he began his second stint at the White House.
To the uninitiated, this act could portray Biden as the good guy and Trump as the bad guy, but the truth is that there is no good guy or lesser evil here—only politricks at play.
Biden’s last-minute removal of the 2021 designation of Havana as a state sponsor of trrorism was not an oversight; it seemed like a deliberate ploy to mock the people of Cuba because as soon as Trump walked into the White House, the removal went up in smoke. If Biden wanted to help the Cuban people, he would have worked to ensure the US Congress ended more than six decades of a unilateral US embargo. Similarly, the US designated Cuba as a state sponsor of trrorism in 1982, rescinded it in 2015 and placed it back in 2021.
To US politicians like Biden, the Cuban masses are nothing more than pieces on a political chessboard that politicians in the empire can shuffle around to make political points. However, such ‘games’ have had a devastating effect on the lives of ordinary Cubans, whose access to essential commodities, such as drugs and food, is hampered by the embargo and the other related economic and political sanctions that Washington has imposed on the island nation. In 2018, the UN’s Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean revealed the blockade had cost the island nation $130 billion since the early 1960s.
The unilateral measures are not only unethical but violate the United Nations charter. For the last 32 years, the UN General Assembly has overwhelmingly voted to end the US policy that economically strangles the Caribbean island nation.
However, the US has arrogantly ignored the resolutions, essentially giving the international community a one-finger salute.
The US has maintained the embargo on Cuba for, among other reasons, as a warning to other states that dare challenge the empire. However, in reality, what has shone is the Cuban people’s resilience and steadfastness in the face of the world’s biggest bully.
Trump can reverse the designation, but the world knows who between Washington and Havana has spread war and t*rror across the world, especially in the Global South.
As Uganda’s representative stated at the 2023 UN General Assembly, ‘All we know about Cuba is friendship and solidarity; we know nothing about t*rrorism.’
Sources:
https://press.un.org/en/2023/ga12552.doc.htm
https://press.un.org/en/2024/ga12650.doc.htm
https://cu.usembassy.gov/u-s-announces-designation-of-cuba-as-a-state-sponsor-of-terrorism
https://www.state.gov/reports/country-reports-on-terrorism-2019/cuba