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Comment by Manuel_D | Hacker News Reader

No really, it's an embargo and a promise to tariff other countries that don't also embargo Cuba.

An embargo is like boycotting a store. A blockade is like standing around the store with a bunch of batons promising to apprehend anyone who tries to shop at the store.

They are not the same.

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Blocking tankers from other countries is a blockade. It’s in the name.

It’s interesting to see you argue semantics because it implies you agree that the blockade is wrong.

But they're not blocking oil tankers from other countries, at least not ones that are operating legally. The only tankers that have been seized were flying false flags, which makes them legal to seize irrespective of the embargo.

They have been stationing coast guard ships as interceptors to stop other tankers from reaching Cuba. At least one tanker turned away in the face of the threat from the USCG.

The whole “false flags” argument is also a stretch given that these ships are flying false flags to avoid US sanctions. “We’re not embargoing, we’re just sanctioning” is kind of a nonsense statement when we seize sanctioned ships. The warrant to seize “Skipper” was issued because it was carrying sanctioned oil, not because of the flag it was flying.

This is an embargo, enforced with both economic and military strength. Again, the fact that you want to argue pointless semantics indicates you believe the embargo is not defensible.

> At least one tanker turned away in the face of the threat from the USCG.

If you're talking about the Ocean Mariner, it was not threatened by the USCG. The ship was carrying Colombian oil, and if it docked in Cuba that would trigger tariffs on Colombian imports.

So the ship lied and said it was bound for the Dominican Republic and tried to sneak into Cuba. When it realized it was spotted by the coast guard, it turned towards its stated destination because they knew they were being watched and if they docked in Cuba then Colombia would be hit with tariffs.

If the ship continued to sail to Cuba and the coast guard sized the ship that would be a blockade.

> This is an embargo, enforced with both economic and military strength. Again, the fact that you want to argue pointless semantics indicates you believe the embargo is not defensible.

Nowhere did I argue that it isn't an embargo. I've been repeatedly explaining that it is an embargo, rather than a blockade. If you think I'm denying that this is an embargo, you've far off the mark of what I've been saying in this thread

Sorry, this is a blockade. The two terms are so indistinguishable here that I mixed them up.

If you genuinely think the two terms are in distinguishable, the why the stubborn insistence on calling it a blockade? Just use the correct term and call it an embargo, and you could've avoided this exchange. If you really think they're indistinguishable you should have no qualm about using the word embargo.

The two terms are generally distinguishable. I said they are indistinguishable here. The situation here is not simply an embargo, which is the point.

The situation is a blockade which is a superset of an embargo.

They can beat around the bush to pretend what is effectively a blockade to be anything but a blockade. Call it a de-facto blockade if you have to. You're using technicality as a crutch.

Edit: corrected it to blockade

It's not a blockade. Any country around the world is free to sail their cargo ships to Cuba and trade with Cubans. This will in turn, trigger tariffs against them in the US, but if countries really want to trade with Cuba they can.

A blockade is carried out through military force. Under a blockade ships are physically prevented from docking with the blockaded country, even if they're legally registered.

If you want to decry what the US is doing to Cuba, go ahead. But it is an embargo not a blockade.

Literally they are blocking tankers from other countries.

No, they are not blocking legally registered tankers from other countries. The handful of boarded ships were boarded because they were flying false flags, which is illegal and opens them up to being seized regardless of the embargo.

So if Russia puts a Russian flag on a tanker and sails it to Cuba, do you suppose that the USGC will allow it to land?

Oh, wait. Those ships are all sanctioned so would be seized. Interesting conundrum.

Yes, a Russian flagged tanker can sail and land in Cuba. The Russian oil tanker Anatolky Kolodkin did, in fact, dock in Cuba and offload oil in March 2026.

The Anatoly Kolodkin did exactly that. Russian oil. Russian ship. Russian flag. Docked in Cuba and unloaded it's oil. It was the first oil Cuba had been delivered in 3 months.

Only because Trump waived sanctions and allowed them to dock.

Responding to reporters' questions on March 29 about whether the ship would be allowed to dock, Trump said, "We don't mind somebody getting a boatload...because they have to survive."

The ship would be allowed to dock regardless of what Trump decided. Just Because Trump gives permission doesn't mean Russia needs permission from the US. If the US boarded the Anatolky Kolodkin, that would be an act of war against Russia. That exactly why the Cuban Missile Crisis was so tense: if the US did stop Soviet ships bound for Cuba then that would be an act of war against the USSR.

You might be right. Maybe Russia could actually deliver some more oil if they wished to.

It is effectively an oil blockade, and it's illegal under international law. Being this pedantic about how the US justifies its actions shows zero understanding for how these things tend to be done. The purpose of a system is what it does.

No, it's not effectively an oil blockade. Countries have the option to trade with Cuba and risk whatever retaliatory tariffs the US promises to put on countries that ship oil to Cuba. These counties choose to refrain from trade with Cuba because the value they get out of exporting goods to the US exceeds the value of trade with Cuba. But if they decided otherwise, that option is available to them.

A blockade is an act of war where a country physically stops vessels from entering port in the target of the blockade. There is no choice in a blockade, the country enforcing the blockade is acting unilaterally

If you really think this is a distinction without a difference, then you could've just used the word "embargo" and avoided this exchange. But you didn't, you chose to call it a blockade, which is incorrect.

And if pretty much any other country in the world threatened tariffs if they traded, most countries would be "meh". The US is the global superpower and a vast player economically.

Pretending that what the US does here is the same as if any other country did it is disengenuous.

It's an effective blockade.

No doubt that America's embargo is more powerful because it's one of the largest import markets in the world. I'm not pretending that an American embargo is no more impactful than a smaller country carrying out an embargo. But it's unambiguously an embargo, not a blockade. These terms have long established definitions. A blockade is an act of war, carried out with military force. An embargo does not become a blockade by virtue of the fact that the country doing the embargo had a big economy.

If you think the embargo is bad, that's fine. What I'm objecting to is people calling it a blockade.

Ok, a fair point, but ultimately in the context of what is happening to Cuba, a semantic one.

The use of tools such as embargoes and threats of economic sanctions to prevent the flow of goods in and out of a set of ports needs to have a name, and “blockade” is as good as any other.

It feels like at this point you're splitting hairs on semantics when the effect is the same.

What is Cuba to do about this non-blockade, embargo?

Cuba can meet the US's demands that they stop being a single party communist state and liberalize their economy.

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