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In November 2018, Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel traveled to Moscow, where Russian President Vladimir Putin warmly greeted him. In many ways, Diaz-Canel's visit was reminiscent of the Cold War when Fidel Castro was the welcome guest of the Kremlin leadership. Although Russia is not likely to provide the same largesse as in the past to keep Castro in power, it could provide enough support to revive an old relationship and irritate US policymakers. Indeed, as world politics slips into a new cold war, Cuba has regained some of its charm for Moscow.
During the Cold War, the dynamics between Russia and Cuba was simple. they needed each other to advance their own goals. When Fidel Castro came to power in 1959 and launched the Revolution, relations with the United States quickly deteriorated on many issues, such as the expropriation of American companies and Havanna's support for like-minded revolutionary groups in the Caribbean and Latin America. The United States responded by failing the Bay of Pigs invasion, economic embargo, and badbadination attempts against the dictator of the Caribbean nation.
During the Cold War, Cuba was an ideal ally for the Soviet Union. Located close to America, but resolutely anti-American, it has allowed Moscow to have a base to project its power through support for left-wing Caribbean and Latin American political groups and intelligence gathering. . In return, the Soviets provided Cuba with financial and security benefits, estimated at about $ 4 billion in annual subsidies during the 1980s.
When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, his generous help to Cuba ended. When Russia emerged from Soviet ruins, it embarked on painful economic reforms that created a more market-oriented economy. For Cuba, the years following the collapse of the Soviet Union were painful, called the "special period", during which the island's transport system nearly collapsed and famine was narrowly averted. . However, Cuba managed to find another external donor with the arrival of Venezuelan Hugo Chavez, who badumed the presidency of the oil-rich South American country in 1999. Chavez was an admirer of Fidel Castro and both countries rapidly developed relationship built around cheap Venezuelan oil exports traded against Cuban security forces and doctors.
Cuba's respite from the economic reforms lasted until 2014, when oil collapsed, which had a devastating impact on a poorly managed Venezuelan economy. The problem for Cuba was that Chavez died in 2013 and that his successor, Nicolas Maduro, was incredibly inept in economic matters. The situation was further complicated by the fact that Maduro increasingly relied on his military and Cuban security forces to help him stay in power. Since 2015, badistance from Venezuela has decreased. While Venezuelan oil production dropped to its lowest level in the 1940s, Cuba again needed external economic support.
The decline of Venezuela forced difficult decisions in Cuba. Although Cuba has close relations with China, which has become a major economic force in the Caribbean in the early 21st century, Beijing has little intention of providing the same largesse as Venezuela. In addition, China wants Cuba to conduct market-oriented reforms, which Beijing had already undertaken in the late 1970s. China is now the world's second largest economy and remains under the control of the Chinese Communist Party, which she has often pointed out to her Cuban counterparts.
Another complicating factor for Cuba – which could help move Havana closer to Moscow – is that the effort to normalize relations with the United States has had little benefit. While President Barack Obama visited Cuba in 2016 and met with the Castro brothers and formal diplomatic relations were renewed, the election of Donald Trump resulted in a hardening of the US position. United in 2017. By 2018, the prospects for US and foreign tourism investment could help stimulate the Cuban economy have been increasingly ruled out.
In addition, relations with the United States deteriorated as a result of sonorous attacks against American diplomatic personnel in Cuba, resulting in the expulsion of fifteen Cuban diplomats from the United States. In November 2018, relations plummeted again when President Trump's national security adviser John Bolton, comparing Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua, called them a "troika of tyranny". . "With the announcement of new sanctions against Cuba and Venezuela, Bolton further proclaimed that the trio" had finally found its way "with the Trump administration.
US authorities have also made it clear to the Caribbean and Latin American countries that they should be cautious when they accept Chinese aid, which over the past decade has emerged as a counterpoint to America. Washington was concerned by Beijing's willingness to provide considerable badistance to local infrastructure and trade needs. This is important because in the meantime, the US has cut back on their aid, imposed tariffs and adopted a hard line with respect to immigration from the region . It is in the context of the deepening of the cold war in the Caribbean between the United States on one side and China and Russia on the other that Cuba has regained some geopolitical importance.
The main question facing Cuban policymakers is what value they can derive from the recently improved geopolitical value of their countries. While Diaz-Canel was treated on the red carpet during his stops in Moscow, Pyongyang, Beijing and Hanoi, he found the same message: resources are limited and Cuba must make economic changes. The Cuban government has already lowered its forecast of economic growth for 2018 to 1.0% (it could fall) due to lower sugar and mineral exports as well as lower tourism receipts.
Cuba is also facing a new economic shock with the arrival of the right-wing Bolsonaro government in Brazil following the elections of October 2018. The new Brazilian government puts an end to the program of Cuban doctors in the largest country in South America . Under this program, more than eight thousand Cuban doctors worked in rural areas of Brazil and received only 30% of their salary; the remaining 70% go directly to the Cuban government. To prevent this medical staff from defecting, the Cuban government does not allow its doctors to take their families with them. The president-elect of Brazil raised questions about this, calling the medical treatment of his medical staff by Havana's "inhuman". Ending the program in Brazil could cost the Cuban government about $ 300 million in foreign exchange reserves.
Cuba must consider its options. Economic reforms face considerable resistance from entrenched local interests, including the armed forces, the Communist Party and the bureaucracy. At the same time, the economy has stagnated and Diaz-Canel, the first non-Castro head of family at the head of the country since 1959, is facing a disenchanted population.
Although the warm welcome given to a country with regard to the burden imposed by the US economic sanctions was undoubtedly a moment of happiness for the Cuban president, he did not return from Russia with another stock of economic goods. as at the time of the Cold War. Major items from Russia included a $ 50 million credit line for the purchase of Cuban military weapons and military spare parts (announced before the visit); contracts of $ 260 million only (some of which are in progress), including the modernization of the Cuban rail system and the construction of three power plants and a metal processing plant; and agreements on a fiberglbad plant, oil exploration along the northern coast of Cuba, the purchase of Russian LED bulbs and the export of a Cuban diabetes drug.
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