• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Donald Trump new Cuba policy, how bad could it be?

Kimawolf

Member
So Donlad Trump, in his continued effort to undo Obama policy has said he will give a major speech on Cuba relations.

His leaky White House has said some points he will hit will be how horrible and anti human rights the Cuban government is and how Obama messed up when he eased our policies. He will also sanction certain people and businesses.

So what is the projected damage he can do?

More importantly and this is not limited to his administration, but America constantly does this while cozying up to Saudi. Just blows my mind.
 

eizarus

Banned
This is Trump; the default assumption should be that he will do the worst thing he can get away with. Hope is for men with capes.
 
Reinstating the old rules is the obvious play. Resume the embargo, cease diplomatic relations, all that.

MAYBE he launches an invasion or something, but I'd call that... less impossible than it should be but pretty unlikely.
 
My fathers side of the family is Cuban, he was the first in his family to be born in the US.

I've participated in state elections in the past but for the midterms I'll be helping a local congressman in his bid to move into the senate.

My grandmother fled Cuban dictatorship. She doesn't have a lot of time left, I'm not going to let her die under an American dictatorship.
 

slit

Member
So Donlad Trump, in his continued effort to undo Obama policy has said he will give a major speech on Cuba relations.

His leaky White House has said some points he will hit will be how horrible and anti human rights the Cuban government is and how Obama messed up when he eased our policies. He will also sanction certain people and businesses.

So what is the projected damage he can do?

More importantly and this is not limited to his administration, but America constantly does this while cozying up to Saudi. Just blows my mind.

Sure, like he really cares about that at all.
 
Anything coming from Trump is honestly just noise at this point.

magnus-bored.gif
 

Retro

Member
Why ask? Anytime something comes up and we wonder "Well, how bad could it be?", it's always worse than expected.
 

RPGCrazied

Member
We know how it will be. Look at how he has treated other nations/world leaders. It will be bad, no matter what he says and does.
 
It would be so fun to travel back to the 1960s and explain to Congress how in a half-century their Cold War hysteria will continue to shape foreign policy in Cuba, all while the modern Republican party can't wait to line up to suck Russia's cock.
 
Does he plan to reverse the immigration policy too? Because if he reverses everything else a new flood of refugees will start and this time without guaranteed stay.
 

Kevinroc

Member
Undo whatever progress Obama did. Will make it much harder for the next President to actually even try to start making progress with Cuba again.
 

JCG

Member
Realistically, he probably will only roll things back to the pre-Obama status quo.

Which is stagnant, terrible and annoying, but it can be overcome once he's out of office.
 

dabig2

Member
I don't know, but it'll probably be shit. Already got tickets to travel to Cuba with my grandparents and father to visit family over there that weren't able to get out back in the 50s (my grandparents immigrated here during the Bautista regime).

It would be so fun to travel back to the 1960s and explain to Congress how in a half-century their Cold War hysteria will continue to shape foreign policy in Cuba, all while the modern Republican party can't wait to line up to suck Russia's cock.

It's always great to revisit this speech from JFK back in 1960 before he became President
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=25660
[...]

The story of the transformation of Cuba from a friendly ally to a Communist base is - in large measure - the story of a government in Washington which lacked the imagination and compassion to understand the needs of the Cuban people - which lacked the leadership and vigor to move forward to meet those needs - and which lacked the foresight and vision to see the inevitable results of its own failures.
[...]

But, if we are not to imitate the partisan irresponsibility of others, we must do more than charge that these storm signals were ignored. The real question is: What should we have done? What did we do wrong? How did we permit the Communists to establish this foothold 90 miles away?
First, we refused to help Cuba meet its desperate need for economic progress. In 1953 the average Cuban family had an income of $6 a week. Fifteen to twenty percent of the labor force was chronically unemployed.

Only a third of the homes in the island even had running water, and in the years which preceded the Castro revolution this abysmal standard of living was driven still lower as population expansion out-distanced economic growth.

Only 90 miles away stood the United States - their good neighbor - the richest Nation on earth - its radios and newspapers and movies spreading the story of America's material wealth and surplus crops.

But instead of holding out a helping hand of friendship to the desperate people of Cuba, nearly all our aid was in the form of weapons assistance - assistance which merely strengthened the Batista dictatorship - assistance which completely failed to advance the economic welfare of the Cuban people - assistance which enabled Castro and the Communists to encourage the growing belief that America was indifferent to Cuban aspirations for a decent life.

This year Mr. Nixon admitted that if we had formulated a program of Latin American economic development 5 years ago: "It might have produced economic progress in Cuba which might have averted the Castro takeover." But what Mr. Nixon neglects to mention is the fact that he was in Cuba 5 years ago himself - gaining experience. He saw the conditions. He talked with the leaders. He knew what our aid program consisted of. But his only conclusion as stated in a Havana press conference, was his statement that he was "very much impressed with the competence and stability" of the Batista dictatorship.

Mr. Nixon could not see then what should have been obvious - and which should have been even more obvious when he made his ill-fated Latin American trip in 1958 - that unless the Cuban people, with our help, made substantial economic progress, trouble was on its way.
If this is the kind of experience Mr. Nixon claims entitles him to be President, then I would say that the American people cannot afford many more such experiences.
Secondly, in a manner certain to antagonize the Cuban people, we used the influence of our Government to advance the interests of and increase the profits of the private American companies, which dominated the island's economy. At the beginning of 1959 U.S. companies owned about 40 percent of the Cuban sugar lands - almost all the cattle ranches - 90 percent of the mines and mineral concessions - 80 percent of the utilities - and practically all the oil industry - and supplied two-thirds of Cuba's imports.

Of course, our private investment did much to help Cuba. But our action too often gave the impression that this country was more interested in taking money from the Cuban people than in helping them build a strong and diversified economy of their own.


The symbol of this shortsighted attitude is now on display in a Havana museum. It is a solid gold telephone presented to Batista by the American-owned Cuban telephone company. It is an expression of gratitude for the excessive telephone rate increase which the Cuban dictator had granted at the urging of our Government. But visitors to the museum are reminded that America made no expression at all over the other events which occurred on the same day this burdensome rate increase was granted, when 40 Cubans lost their lives in an assault on Batista's palace.
The third, and perhaps most disastrous of our failures, was the decision to give stature and support to one of the most bloody and repressive dictatorships in the long history of Latin American repression. Fulgencio Batista murdered 20,000 Cubans in 7 years - a greater proportion of the Cuban population than the proportion of Americans who died in both World Wars, and he turned democratic Cuba into a complete police state - destroying every individual liberty.

Yet, our aid to his regime, and the ineptness of our policies, enabled Batista to invoke the name of the United States in support of his reign of terror.

Administration spokesmen publicly praised Batista - hailed him as a stanch ally and a good friend - at a time when Batista was murdering thousands, destroying the last vestiges of freedom, and stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from the Cuban people, and we failed to press for free elections.

We stepped up a constant stream of weapons and munitions to Batista - justified in the name of hemispheric defense, when, in fact, their only real use was to crush the dictator's opposition, and even when the Cuban civil war was raging - until March of 1958 - the administration continued to send arms to Batista which were turned against the rebels - increasing anti-American feeling and helping to strengthen the influence of the Communists. For example, in Santa Clara, Cuba, today there is an exhibit commemorating the devastation of that city by Batista's planes in December of 1958. The star item in that exhibit is a collection of bomb fragments inscribed with a handshake and the words: "Mutual Defense - made in U.S.A."

Even when our Government had finally stopped sending arms, our military missions stayed to train Batista's soldiers for the fight against the revolution - refusing to leave until Castro's forces were actually in the streets of Havana.
It is no wonder, in short, that during these years of American indifference the Cuban people began to doubt the sincerity of our dedication to democracy. They began to feel that we were more interested in maintaining Batista than we were in maintaining freedom - that we were more interested in protecting our investments than we were in protecting their liberty - that we wanted to lead a crusade against communism abroad but not against tyranny at home. Thus, it was our own policies - not Castro's - that first began to turn our former good neighbors against us. And Fidel Castro seized on this rising anti-American feeling, and exploited it, to persuade the Cuban people that America was the enemy of democracy - until the slogan of the revolution became "Cuba, Si, Yanqui, No" - and Soviet imperialism had captured a movement which had originally sprung from the ideals of our own American Revolution.

The great tragedy today is that we are repeating many of the same mistakes throughout Latin America. The same grievances - the same poverty and discontent and distrust of America which Castro rode to power are smoldering in almost every Latin Nation.

For we have not only supported a dictatorship in Cuba - we have propped up dictators in Venezuela, Argentina, Colombia, Paraguay, and the Dominican Republic. We not only ignored poverty and distress in Cuba - we have failed in the past 8 years to relieve poverty and distress throughout the hemisphere. For despite the bleak poverty that grips nearly all of Latin America - with an average income of less than $285 a year - with an exploding population that threatens even this meager standard of living - yet our aid programs have continued to concentrate on wasteful military assistance until we made a sudden recognition of their needs for development capital practically at the point of Mr. Castro's gun.

Today time is running out in Latin America. Our once firm friends are drifting away. Our historic ties are straining under our failure to understand their aspirations. And although the cold war will not be won in Latin America, it could very well be lost there.

If we continue to repeat our past errors - if we continue to care more for the support of regimes than the friendship of people - if we continue to devote greater effort to the support of dictators than to the fight against poverty and hunger - then rising discontent will provide fertile ground for Castro and his Communist friends.

[...]

Decent speech where he outlines the troubles, what caused those troubles, and what we might be able to do to rectify these problems. Not going to say much on what happened after he became President (in regards to Cuba and escalating Vietnam), but the speech itself is a poignant one. Sad thing is 55+ years later and we still repeat the same mistakes...virtually everywhere in the world.
 
Top Bottom