Of course, but the article writes as though the US just left these places to their own devices, even though they constantly meddled in these countries after the fact, and meddled in many more countries across the world. It's not like these countries were fully sovereign after the fact. The US backed dictators in every single one of the countries discussed: Marcos, Noriega, Batista, the Duvaliers (and of courses many others in different countries).

The author fails to understand that decolonization can be a pretext for continuing exploitation of foreign territories while abandoning the nominal moral obligation to develop them. In the counterfactual where the US maintained control of these countries, they would not have been developed to first-world standards, they would have just been exploited overtly.

The article seems to regard some of these places as failures without examining _why_ things might be the way they are. Would life for Cubans have been better under American rule? Perhaps, but its not like life under Cuban rule was given much of a chance…

Like how is there a section on Cuba that does not mention the American embargo on Cuba for the past 50 years? How can we take this analysis seriously?