Cuba
The Wrong War to Win Quickly: On the Consequences of Invading Cuba
With the Iran war settled, the deferred question returns on schedule. Taking the threat against Havana at face value, this is an attempt to count what a war with Cuba would actually produce — not in the triumphal grammar of Washington nor the martyrological grammar of Havana, but on the ledger where consequences are tallied after the cameras leave. The gravest danger may not be the war the planners fear but the aftermath none of them have planned for.
Read more →Conflicting Economic Claims Between Cuba and the United States
The United States possesses a legitimate, though methodologically inflated, claim arising from the 1959-1960 Cuban nationalizations. Cuba possesses a substantially larger, legally cognizable counter-claim arising from sixty-five years of comprehensive economic coercion. On a net basis, the equitable balance tilts substantially in Cuba’s favor. The 2026 oil blockade crosses the threshold of collective punishment and eliminates any remaining proportionality defense that Washington could invoke.
Read more →GAESA: State Within a State, or Revolutionary Lifeline?
A documented analysis of Cuba’s military conglomerate GAESA — separating corroborated evidence from disputed claims, and tracing the connections between leaked financial records, U.S. sanctions strategy, and the life imprisonment of a former economy minister.
Read more →Letters to Eloisa
A haunting, deeply affecting, and politically urgent masterpiece. Director Adriana Bosch brilliantly weaves the intimate, heartbreaking correspondence of family separation with the chilling macro-tragedy of totalitarian censorship. Supported by Alfred Molina’s profoundly nuanced narration and Arturo Sandoval’s melancholic, evocative score, Letters to Eloisa is not just a historical profile of a silenced literary genius — it is a lyrical and vital manifesto on the necessity of creative freedom.
Read more →Ninety Miles and Counting
America’s maximum pressure campaign against Cuba has achieved something remarkable: it has made the island’s misery someone else’s problem.
Read more →Pieces on the Board: The Cuba Confrontation, May 25–27, 2026
A three-day window in which the U.S. military posture for an attack on Cuba becomes public, Havana takes its case to the UN Security Council, and the energy blockade reaches into kitchens in Santiago. The pieces are in place; what remains undecided is whether Washington uses them.
Read more →Cuba: U.S. Department of State Pamphlet, April 1961
Released two weeks before the Bay of Pigs invasion, the April 1961 U.S. State Department ‘White Paper’ outlined the official case against Fidel Castro, arguing that he betrayed the 1959 revolution’s democratic goals, aligned Cuba with the Sino-Soviet bloc, and sought to subvert neighboring Latin American democracies. Originally drafted by the Bureau of Inter-American Affairs, the 36-page document was extensively revised in the White House by presidential aides Arthur Schlesinger and Richard Goodwin.
Read more →Cuba at a Crossroads: The May 21, 2026 Escalation
On May 21, 2026, four distinct but converging stories sharpened the U.S.–Cuba confrontation: an unsealed indictment of former president Raúl Castro, condemnations from Moscow and Beijing, an 8–1 Supreme Court ruling expanding Helms-Burton liability against major cruise lines, and a defiant mobilization by the Cuban government. Together they suggest a coordinated pressure campaign with parallels to the Trump administration’s earlier action against Venezuela.
Read more →Indictment as Stagecraft: Washington's Move on Raúl Castro
A federal indictment of Cuba’s 94-year-old former president lands on the anniversary of the end of US military occupation. It is both a real symbolic blow to the Cuban regime and a piece of carefully staged political theater. Reading the difference matters for assessing what comes next.
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